Pawning the Silver
Sold as a challenger in 2020. Run since like a pawnshop.
TPG Telecom has sold its towers, its fibre and its customers’ phone debts. It is still using all three, and pays monthly for the privilege.
There is a shop on every high street that does business this way. The difference is that the pawnbroker gives the silver back.
In 2020 the scheme booklet promised shareholders “Australia’s leading challenger full-service telecommunications company”, worth sixteen and a half billion dollars on its first morning and built to trouble Telstra and Optus.
Six years on, the fixed half belongs to a rival, the fibre beneath it is rented for fifteen years, and the regional network has been switched off and replaced with one rented from a competitor.
The company is valued at seven and a quarter billion.
The booklet is still on the ASX. So are the accounts. Neither mentions a redemption date.
The numbers
Every merger arrives with two documents. The first is drafted to be believed. The second is drafted to be correct, and turns up every six months for the rest of your life.
Six years is long enough to find out which was which.
Here they are.
The promise, in its own words
The document runs to 358 pages and is dated 19 May 2020. It did not hedge.
The merger of TPG and Vodafone Hutchison Australia would create, in a phrase deployed until it wore smooth, Australia's leading challenger full-service telecommunications company. The word carrying the freight was full. Fixed and mobile, side by side. A "more diverse earnings base across fixed broadband and mobile." A "more formidable competitor against Telstra and Optus."
The whole case rested on having both halves under one roof.
The numbers beneath it were real. Pro forma revenue of $5,909 million, EBITDA of $1,977 million, and a promise of "increased financial scale." On 30 June 2020, its first morning on the exchange, the merged company opened at a market capitalisation of $16.55 billion.
The shares traded as high as $9.70 that day. They have not been there since.
On 15 October 2026 the figure was $7.24 billion.