(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Auris)
TalkTalk’s Chief Executive, Dido Harding, says the company has recovered from the cyber attack that exposed the data of more than 100,000 customers—an incident that cost the business up to £60 million. Despite that hit, pre-tax profit fell by more than 50% to £14 million for the year ending March 2016, while revenue grew 2.4% year-on-year to £1.84 billion. The revenue increase was helped by promotions such as complimentary TV upgrades.
In 2016 TalkTalk reported its strongest levels of customer loyalty on record, with churn falling to just 1.3%. Nevertheless, the company lost 95,000 customers in the 12 months to April 2016 and added only 4,000 net customers across its phone and broadband services. In response, TalkTalk is shifting its focus away from competing solely on price and toward improving customer experience; the company invested £19 million in an IT program aimed at enhancing service quality and reducing billing mistakes.
TalkTalk, which currently provides mobile services over Vodafone’s network, announced plans to migrate to O2 in May 2016. The business added 235,000 mobile customers in the year to March, giving it about a 14% share of the mobile SIM market. Still, the company’s traditional position as a value-focused provider of bundled broadband, phone and TV services faces pressure from shrinking industry margins and ongoing consolidation across the telecoms sector.
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