Ian Fishwick, CEO said, “When City analysts review the success of Telecoms companies they concentrate on ‘underlying EBITDA’ as this gives the best measure of profitability and cash generation capabilities for our sector. We are therefore delighted to announce our 10th consecutive year of rising underlying EBITDA. This is a feat that few companies in any industry will achieve and we’d like to say a huge thank you to employees past and present. We also recognise that we couldn’t have achieved this without the magnificent support of our suppliers, shareholders, and most important of all, our customers.
Our reliance on call revenue continues to reduce and it now represents only 1/3 of our income. We have seen rising revenues in new products with data connectivity up 9% and cloud-based contact centre solutions up 15%.
Since our debt peaked in 2008 we have paid off £9m and our debt is now well under one years’ EBITDA. We have therefore trebled our dividend and are again looking at acquisitions.”