It s great to see so many familiar faces here again, welcome back. If this is your first

Transcription

1 Hi, It s great to see so many familiar faces here again, welcome back. If this is your first TeamTalk AGM thanks for coming along - we really do appreciate your input. I need to explain to you that we re a little less formal than most public companies. Every year we invite a bunch of the team to sit in with us. I figure that it s good for the guys to get know who they are working for and so hopefully you have time to stay for a drink at the end and tell them what you think of our company. Anyway over the years a number of you have got to know us pretty well; so before I get into the formal bit, I ll tell you about some of the staff comings and goings. There s a bunch of new managers on board and I ll tell you more about that later. There are also a few people who have left. Russell Kelling one of our finance guys isn t here you may recall Russell that bounced back from throat cancer a year or so ago. Well, Russell decided that the rough and tumble of life at TeamTalk was no longer for him so he resigned we all wish him well for the next phase of his career. You may also remember Jason. Jason s the big tall guy who helped Miss Kylie on the registration desk. Well; unfortunately Jason is alleged to have committed a fraud against the company. He worked with us for ten years and in all other respects he was a good guy but I couldn t let that go, so he was fired, the police were informed and charges have been laid. On a brighter note Bruce Harding has retired after

2 nearly 50 years in the industry. Of course retirement is no excuse to stop working so we ve lured him back as a part time Consultant. And I should add it s great to see you here Bruce in your capacity as a Shareholder. There are also members of the Farmside Board here. Each of our subsidiary companies has its own board and Reg Barrett and Derek Locke are Independent Directors on the Farmside Board. Before I get down to business I ve got tell you I ve got the best job in telecommunications and that s because TeamTalk is always doing exciting things like providing satellite comms for a Mobile Breast Screening Unit in Northland, or comms for the around Taupo Cycling Challenge, we are also helping GNS monitor bridges in Canterbury after the earthquake and we re working with MBIE to put broadband into Haast for the first time. We re also doing world leading stuff, the leading edge R+D in the broadband space, it s stuff called Software Defined Networks and CityLink is right at the forefront we ve got computer scientists from all over the world looking at what we are doing it s that advanced. Anyway; enough of me rambling lets get down to business. I m going to talk about three things today, firstly I will tell you what s been happening with your business over the last year - now this is important because we ve made some major changes to the Company and we ve really set it up for the future, then I m going to discuss the overall Telecommunications Industry as you will have seen from the press there is a lot of uncertainty within the Industry at the moment. I m going to unravel some of that and tell you what it means for TeamTalk and then finally I ll tell you where the Company is going.

3 So in the last year there were two major changes at TeamTalk, we bought Farmside last December and we ve put in place a top notch management team. Farmside is NZ s specialist rural ISP and it gives us that all important third leg to our business. I have to say it s been a bit like buying a house after living in it for a few months we discovered that there were a few things we needed to renovate. So I ve swapped out the management team for a new one and we re stepping up the customer service to a level that you would expect from a TeamTalk Company. Farmside is a great little business and it s going to be a big part of our future, so its important that I take the time now to sort out the foundations. Like any renovation project these things always take a little longer than you expect but I have to say that its worth putting the effort in up front, I m happy with Farmside and I m confident that it will play a big part in our future. The other big change we have made is to strengthen our Executive Team. Acquiring Farmside tipped the balance, we are no longer a small business, we are now a medium size business and as a medium sized business we needed to put in place the appropriate structures, processes and people if we are to continue to grow the business. After twenty years I ve stepped away from day to day management of the Mobile Radio Operation and I ve handed responsibility over to Peter Baines. Peter is an ex Tait executive who had been doing entrepreneurial stuff in the mobile radio space in Australia. Nick Willis is now looking after CityLink, after stints with Vodafone and

4 Deloitte. He also did the entrepreneurial thing before joining us. Peter Roborgh who is not here today, is now running Farmside he s a battle hardened executive who has run a number of businesses in the Electricity and Telco sectors. To complement the team we ve added a Chief Technology Officer Jamie Baddeley. Jamie s job is to stitch together all of our technologies and hunt out new ones that we can turn into revenue streams. And of course we ve still got Geoff who continues to do a great job of managing our dollars. I ve got to say this is a serious heavyweight team and one that I have enormous confidence in. So that s our business. We have a new management team that s getting its feet under the table as we speak and we have a great new acquisition that we are renovating as fast as we can. All in all I m pretty happy with where we are at there is no question we have more fire power and capability than we have ever had before, and are more resilient than we have been before and as my daughter would say; We are in a happy place. Ok; now let s take a look at where the telecommunications industry is at. If I had to sum it up with a word that word would be uncertainty. And for a company like ours uncertainty is a good thing. For the industry as a whole its bad but for TeamTalk its good that s because we re smart and we can move fast. This uncertainty permeates the entire industry at the moment. Let me give you a few examples. The government s policy is to promote competition throughout the industry but in practice all they want to do is promote fibre optics and screw the

5 rest. The Axe the Copper Tax campaign, that I am sure you have heard about is a side effect of that; on one side you have the companies that have invested in fibre and on the other side you have the guys who followed the government s old policy and invested in the electronics that make copper work. Both sides are trying to buy as many allies as they can and they're both throwing what we call FUD about. There will be winners and losers, at TeamTalk we re on the sidelines on this one we re not too fussed about what the outcome is. There is also uncertainty around how the government is planning to fund remote rural telecommunications - this has the potential to benefit TeamTalk. And on top of that there is a review of the whole Telecommunications Act coming up and who knows where that might lead. The trick for us is to wait until the spinning slows and then pounce. We re small, we re nimble and we ve got the smartest kids in the room, so we should be able to beat everyone else to the punch. The trick is to wait for the right moment and then move fast. So that s were we ve been and that s the environment that we are operating in, lets take a look at where we are going. First up we re sticking to our knitting we re not changing our business model. We re all about acquiring and operating niche telecommunications business. What sets us apart is the way that we run these businesses. We run them as stand alone

6 operations which are totally focused on their individual customer segments. Everything is lined up behind the customers, the products, our service, our people, even the culture of the businesses it s all based on the customers, and because of this we are more focused and more responsive than anyone else. My immediate priority is to continue blooding in our management team and to finish off the renovations at Farmside. Alongside that we ve got some product development work to do at CityLink. CityLink is New Zealand s most advanced broadband company but over the last couple of years we haven t launched many new services that s going to change. And in Mobile Radio world our customers are increasingly asking us to solve their business problems rather than just selling them airtime. So you can see there are a lot of opportunities out there and we re really enjoying getting in amongst them. So what does all of this mean for you guys well don't expect any hockey stick growth curve or any massive increase in customer numbers but what you can expect is for us to keep pumping out those dividends in much the same way as we have over the last 10 years thank you ENDS For more information please contact David Ware, TeamTalk