Aussie Broadband is officially a public company. Trading of shares in the company began this morning with a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), following an oversubscribed Initial Public Offering (IPO) that raised $40 million.
Under the IPO, 40 million shares were offered at $1 a share, which gave the company an initial market capitalisation of $190.3 million.
Managing Director and CEO Phillip Britt said the $10 million customer offer was over-subscribed and closed within 75 minutes, with over 9,000 queueing before the offer opened. Existing shareholders remain heavily invested in the business and there was no sell down in the IPO.
Companies typically become publicly traded, as a means to raise capital to support plans for future growth. In the case of Aussie Broadband, it looks like they’re doing exactly that, with plans to continue climbing the ladder from their current position as the 5th largest Australian ISP.
Currently, Aussie Broadband services more than 300,000 residential and business customers across the country.
“Money raised under the offer will be used to accelerate infrastructure development, acquire new customers and expand its business offering.”
Aussie Broadband Managing Director and CEO Phillip Britt
Dark fibre network
The successful IPO, managed by Shaw and Partners, places the company in a strong position to progress its $67 million rollout of its own dark fibre network, which will reduce its reliance on third-party infrastructure and ultimately deliver meaningful long-term cost savings.
The fibre project, which started in May 2020, is expected to be completed by 2022.
Phil said this is really the next major step in allowing the company to control its own destiny.
“Our own fibre in the ground goes to the heart of our approach to the business. It means that we can control quality and improve our customer experience even more, and it means we can start to drive down our backhaul costs.”
Aussie Broadband Managing Director and CEO Phillip Britt
Taking a look back, the company started back in 2008, a result of a merger between Wideband Networks in the Latrobe Valley, and Westvic Broadband based in Warrnambool.
“We’ve come a long way from 27,000 customers in June 2017. Last month we connected our 300,000th customer – a 100,000 net gain in just over 5 months.
As an Australian-owned company, we are committed to having only Australian support centres. This sets us apart from competitors who rely heavily on overseas-based call centres where staff generally know little about local market conditions affecting customers.
Our business has grown strongly over the past three years due to our reputation for providing high-quality internet at both home, business and enterprise level, and our transparent customer service to ensure our customers have as seamless a service from us as possible.
Our investors are telling us they want to become part of a business that is operating with incredibly strong ethics and values, that is contributing in unique ways to the Australian community and economy, that has a heart and treats its people well. They want to be part of the Aussie Broadband story, as well as see their capital grow with us”
Aussie Broadband Managing Director and CEO Phillip Brit
Over the last four years, the company has exhibited rapid growth through a combination of innovative, competitively-priced NBN bundles, together with the NBN becoming more widely available across Australia.
In FY18 Aussie Broadband seen around 60,000 new residential connections and generated $49.27 million in revenue. The company forecasts that in FY21 it will see a revenue of $338.10 million and about 368,000 residential connections.
Congrats to Aussie Broadband on this fairly important day in their history. I personally use AussieBB on a 100/40Mbps plan, but have experimented with their 1000Mbps service. I’ve always had reliable and fast speeds (sometimes above 100Mbps) and it’s not surprising they’re doing well in Australia.