Australian phone company Telstra lifts profit

Feb 8, 2012, 23:13 GMT

Sydney - Telstra Corp Ltd, Australia's biggest phone company, Thursday reported first-half net profits rose 22 per cent to 1.5 billion Australian dollars (1.6 billion US dollars) from 1.2 billion Australian dollars in the previous reporting period.

Pre-tax earnings were up 3.7 per cent to 4.8 billion Australian dollars from 4.6 billion Australian dollars in the six months to the end of December.

'Results for the first half of the year were in line with our expectations despite the difficult macro-economic backdrop,' Telstra said in a statement.

The result was slightly below market expectations.

The former state-owned company said it had added 958,000 new mobile customers in the period and shed 136,000 fixed-line customers.

Link: http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20120209/pdf/4247vhkp7dhryz.pdf

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