Phil Britt (Aussie Broadband)
Telecommunications provider Aussie Broadband has listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with a $40-million initial public offering (IPO).
Under the IPO, 40 million shares were offered at $1 a share, giving the company an initial market capitalisation of $190.3 million.
According to Aussie Broadband, funds raised from the IPO will be used to accelerate infrastructure development, acquire new customers and expand its business product offering.
“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,” said CEO and managing director Phil Britt.
The telco has been open about its public offering ambitions since last September when the Australian Financial Review published news of the telco's intention to list in 2020.
The company soon confirmed its plans on its blog saying it was in the midst of a pre-IPO capital raising, while appointing Brian Maher as its new chief financial officer.
The IPO, managed by Shaw and Partners, will now allow Aussie Broadband to progress its $67 million roll-out of its own dark fibre network, which will reduce its reliance on third-party infrastructure.
The fibre project, which started in May 2020, is expected to be completed by 2022.
Also in May, Aussie Broadband released 'Carbon', a service that the telco provider says can enable IT managers and managed service providers (MSP) to turn connections on at NBN-serviced locations within minutes.
Four months later, the company announced that it was planning to start offering OptiComm FTTP services.
This contributed to Aussie Broadband’s growing customer network, which it claims now spans 300,000 residential, small business and enterprise users, making it the “fifth largest provider of NBN services in Australia today”.
