New Telstra boss Andy Penn has committed to do whatever it takes to maintain the telco's dominance of the Australian mobile market against a resurgent threat from rivals.
The telco unveiled an as-expected $4.23 billion full year profit on Thursday and lifted its full year dividend half a cent to 15.5 cents.
Mr Penn used the results to lay out his priorities for the company, including increased investment in its mobile network and the search for new acquisitions to help drive the telco's profit growth.
Telstra recently upped its planned investment in its mobile network to $5 billion over three years in an effort to retain its advantage over Optus and Vodafone, which have been spending up big on their own networks, and Mr Penn said the telco would spend more if necessary.
"We have mobile leadership and we're committed to continue to invest to maintain that," he said.
"We recently announced that we will increase the level of capital that we will invest in our mobile network over the next couple of years and we will increase it again if we need to."
The growth of Telstra's mobile business has slowed in the past 12 months, with 664,000 new customers added during 2014/15, compared to almost one million the year before.
That's partly a result of the maturity of the market - Australia already has one of the highest rates of smart-phone ownership in the world - and Mr Penn said future growth would come from tablets and machine-to-machine connections.
Even so, it's clear Telstra has relatively little room left to grow in its traditional business, which is why Mr Penn and his predecessor David Thodey have been on the acquisition trail, looking for new opportunities in Asia, media and e-healthcare.
But Morningstar analyst Daniel Mueller said those investments had been relatively insignificant in the context of a company the size of Telstra, which has a market capitalisation of more than $75 billion.
"Every result they seem to come up with some really immaterial part of their business to talk about, which sounds exciting and does tend to get some people excited," he told AAP.
"But I just view e-health and some of those bolt-on acquisitions as not really sufficient to move the dial."
Telstra's net profit for 2014/15 was down one per cent compared to a year ago, though the result was skewed by the sale of its Hong Kong mobile business a year ago.
Underlying earnings were up two per cent to $10.8 billion and the company expects single digit earnings growth for the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, Singapore-owned Optus on Thursday announced it had lifted its net profit 20 per cent to $196 million during the June quarter.
Investors were less than enthusiastic with Telstra's result, with shares down 14 cents to $6.10.
Mr Mueller said the share price slide suggested some shareholders had been expecting a bigger lift in the company's dividend, or a repeat of last year's $1 billion share buy-back.
TELSTRA'S PROFIT SLIPS
* Net profit down 1pct to $4.23b
* Revenue up 2.8pct to $26b
* Final dividend up half a cent to 15.5 cents
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