Download Weekly: Chorus first half flat as economy bites

Chorus posted a flat first half result for the 2025 financial year showing a net loss of $5 million. Operating revenue edged down 0.6 percent to $500 million while the company posted an even smaller fall of 0.3 percent in EBITDA.

In the webcast used by the company to brief journalists and analysts on the result, CEO Mark Aue described it as a steady performance in the face of New Zealand’s economic headwinds.

While Chorus' concerns about the underlying economy mirrored statements the week earlier from Spark, the wholesale network company’s performance was in stark contrast to that of its former parent.

"Steady is a positive"

Aue says, given the circumstances, the company was pleased with its performance: “In this climate, steady can be taken as a real positive and that's how we see it”.

During the half year Chorus saw fibre uptake in the areas it services move up from 71.4 percent to 71.8 percent. Late last year Aue said Chorus’s goal is to reach 80 percent uptake by 2030.

Chorus added 14k fibre connections during the half. The network now passes 1.52 million premises. Aue says it needs another 240k connections to reach its 2030 target and has a plan to get there that includes new builds and selling fibre to customers reached by the network, but not yet connected.

Copper is on the way out

There are now fewer than 28k copper connections in the Chorus fibre footprint. Aue says he expects the last copper line to shut by the end of the 2026 financial year, that’s about 16 months from now. This copper network closure is six months earlier than the original plan.

Chorus plans to connect another 10k premises to fibre by the end of the current financial year. He says lessons learned in the earlier years of fibre roll out mean the company can speed up the process of moving new connections from copper to fibre.

Chorus still has around 80k copper connections in places where fibre is not available.

Not everyone moves from copper to fibre

The number has dropped in the last year as consumers moved to other broadband technologies. In practice this means fixed wireless from the main mobile carriers or the specialist wireless internet providers along with some choosing LEO satellite broadband.

One indicator of the state of the wider economy is the relatively high uptake of Chorus’ low-end 50 Mbps Home Fibre Starter plan. This is designed to provide customers who might otherwise be locked out of fibre with a cheaper product.

Meanwhile there has been a 17k increase in faster connections including Fibre Max and Hyperfibre products. Around a quarter of residential premises are now on these plans.

Comment: a tale of two telcos

The trajectory of Chorus and Spark’s market capitalisation shows the relative performance of the businesses since they demerged in 2011.

Chorus’ market capitalisation has climbed from NZ$1.18 billion in 2011 to $3.71 billion today. In thirteen years it has grown by 210 percent. That’s a compound annual growth rate of around 9.2 percent.

Today Chorus has roughly the same absolute market cap that Telecom NZ had at the time of the demerger.

Spark is bigger too

Contrast this with Spark’s performance since the split. In 2011 its market cap was NZ$3.93 billion. Today it is $5.11 billion. Direct comparison between the two doesn’t make sense, Spark divested its cell towers along the way.

Even so, in 2011 Telecom NZ’s market cap was 3.3 times the size of Chorus. Today it is 1.4 times the size of its former network division.

Another comparison is with telecommunications revenue. The Commerce Commission uses something called ‘qualified revenue’ to decide each telco’s portion of the annual Telecommunications Development Levy.

Last year the Commission decided that Spark had to pay around 29 percent of the levy, while Chorus paid 19 percent. That’s a similar ratio.

Along the way, Spark’s tower sale means it has divested a sizeable capital asset, while Chorus has built, and continues to build, a sizeable capital asset.

Pay TV satellite: Sky says “We’ve got this”

Last Friday Sky issued a statement saying it was on track to move its satellite operations from Optus D2 to the KSAT owned Koreasat 6. The move should be completed by early April.

This is an interim measure. In the longer term Sky will migrate its services to the Optus 11 satellite which faces a delayed launch. The move was needed because Optus D2 is running out of fuel and needs to be decommissioned earlier than planned.

In the meantime the old satellite has moved its orbit to save fuel and that has caused reception problems for some users. Sky says it only affects “up to 5 percent” of Skybox customers.

Kordia wins Cloudflare partner status

Kordia is now a Cloudflare Authorised Service Delivery Partner for the company’s Zero Trust Services. It’s a timely move with the local market poised to adopt Zero Trust. A recent survey Cloudflare found 37 percent of New Zealand organisations are already using Zero Trust with a further 47 percent planning to invest in the over the next 12 months.

Eutelsat makes first direct 5G connection from space

Eutelsat, a French satellite service provider, says it has successfully made a 5G network connection using OneWeb's low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

The trial puts the European IRIS² constellation on a path to compete in providing mobile coverage in remote locations away from terrestrial cell towers. However, it won’t happen soon, the IRIS² network which will feature a mix of 270 LEOs and 18 medium Earth orbit satellites isn’t expected to be fully operational until 2030.

Meanwhile US-based AST SpaceMobile says it has successfully tested direct to cell video calls from its satellite network. The company has been working with Vodafone and waiting for formal permission from regulators before it can offer commercial services.

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The old rural comms tech in question is the customer multi-access radio (CMAR) and Country Set technology that has been used to provide voice services in areas that are even beyond the reach of copper networks. Chorus plans to close CMAR at the end of next month.

As the report notes, the technology is “completely munted”.

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Later in the story there’s mention of Rocket Lab’s New Zealand home being a problem for US customers.

Maps of terrestrial fibre networks aren’t great. The Internet Society wants to fix that
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