Year End Trading Update and Notice of Results
Summary by AI BETAClose X
28 April 2026
Telecom Plus PLC
Year End Trading Update and Notice of Results
Telecom Plus PLC (trading as Utility Warehouse), an integrated and unique platform for bundling subscription-style essential household services in the UK, today issues a trading update for its financial year ending 31 March 2026 (FY26).
Trading highlights
● Organic net customer growth of 10.3%, with total net customer growth of 23.3% (including broadband customers acquired from TalkTalk)
● Cross-sell trial into the acquired TalkTalk customers continuing to perform strongly with 14.5k customers upgraded and cross-sold to date
● Adjusted profit before tax for FY26 is expected to be at the bottom end of our previously guided range of £132m-£138m, following reduced energy consumption during an unseasonably warm winter
● Continued strong interest in our unique Partner income opportunity, with Partner numbers increasing to 77k
● Winner of Best Value for Money at the uSwitch 2025 Energy awards, together with 2025 Which? Recommended Provider awards for Energy and Broadband
Financial
Adjusted pre-tax profits for FY26 are expected to be at the bottom end of our previously guided range of £132m-£138m, following reduced energy consumption during an unseasonably warm winter.
We anticipate the FY26 year-end leverage ratio to be around 1.0x net debt/adjusted EBITDA, including the consideration for acquiring the TalkTalk customers, demonstrating our robust balance sheet and strong underlying cash generation, notwithstanding continued strong organic customer growth.
In response to feedback from many shareholders, we have decided to review our shareholder distribution policy. We intend to maintain a total payout ratio of at least 80% of adjusted profit after tax, but this will, from our upcoming full year results in June, now be split between both dividends and share buybacks, with at least 50% of the total payout each year being allocated to ordinary dividends and the remainder being allocated to either share buybacks or special dividends, depending on whether the Company is able to repurchase shares at below their fair value. This revised policy recognises the cash generative nature of the Group and its strong balance sheet and reiterates our commitment to maximising total shareholder returns.
Trading
Customer numbers increased by 23.3% to 1.43m (FY25: 1.16m), including 193k fixed-line/broadband customers acquired from TalkTalk as part of a cross-sell trial partnership. Organic customer numbers continued their double digit growth trajectory, increasing by 10.3% to 1.26m (FY25: 1.14m)[1].
The total number of services we provided increased by 12.1% to 3.80m (FY25: 3.39m). Organic service numbers increased by 7.6%[2] during the year.
Despite a 29% increase in Mobile services, our overall organic services growth rate during FY26 was behind our customer growth rate, primarily reflecting continued strong competitive activity in the Energy and Broadband markets, resulting in lower than expected growth in Energy and organic Broadband services (1.8% and 3.8% in FY26 respectively), whilst Insurance services (-8.3% in FY26) have been slower than expected to recover from the temporary pause in new Insurance sales during FY25.
Our churn rate increased slightly to 14.2% (FY25: 13.7%), reflecting the competitive dynamics mentioned above, with the shape of the energy wholesale forward curve enabling competitors to offer fixed price energy tariffs meaningfully below the Ofgem price cap for much of the year.
Macro-economic pressures and longer-term structural trends (such as the work transition and the pensions crisis) continue to provide a favourable backdrop for new Partner recruitment and engagement. Partner numbers increased to 77k (FY25: 72k) with an encouraging increase in monthly active Partners during the second half of the year.
TalkTalk update
The customers acquired from TalkTalk increased our broadband services by 193k. These customers are expected to generate a return above post-tax WACC, even without cross-selling any other services to them.
160k of these had been migrated onto our systems by year end, with the remainder expected to migrate by the end of the first quarter of FY27. Initial cross-sell results are continuing to perform strongly, with 14.5k customers upgraded and cross-sold during the year.
Looking forward
We have now delivered compound double-digit percentage organic customer growth across a range of market conditions for close to five consecutive years, and we remain focused on our medium-term target of increasing our customer base to two million households and beyond.
While recent competitive dynamics have impacted services per customer and our churn rate, our unique platform and word-of-mouth route to market remain a proven model for delivering high quality, multiservice customers at scale, generating a long-term source of growing, recurring, subscription-style revenues. In addition, our wholesale energy supply arrangements continue to insulate us from the current energy market volatility caused by events in the Middle East.
Our focus is on progressively increasing services per customer, reducing churn, growing contribution per customer, and enhancing customer lifetime values, in order to maximise long-term shareholder value. As a result, we are currently considering a number of potential initiatives to achieve these goals; we will provide an update on the outcome of this review together with our full year results for the financial year ended 31 March 2026, which we expect to announce on 23 June 2026.
Stuart Burnett, CEO said:
"We have now delivered a fifth consecutive year of record customers, services and profits, all through helping households to save time and money via our unique, subscription-style, essential services platform.
Our annual Partner sales conference took place earlier this month, attended by a record number of Partners, and we launched a number of changes to our customer proposition designed to improve the quality of new customers gathered over the coming months. With our Partner income opportunity increasingly of its time, we remain focused on growing our business to supplying two million households and beyond over the coming years.
We look forward to providing an update in June on our plans to support more households with even more services, in order to maximise long-term shareholder value."
For more information, please contact:
|
Telecom Plus |
|
|
Stuart Burnett, CEO |
0208 955 5000 |
|
Nick Schoenfeld, CFO |
|
|
|
|
|
For Investor relations |
|
|
Louise Rich |
louise.rich@uw.co.uk/ 07486 895017 |
|
|
|
|
For Media relations |
|
|
Lansons Communications LLP |
utilitywarehouse@lansons.com |
|
Tom Baldock |
07860 101715 |
This announcement includes inside information as defined in Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation No. 596/2014 (as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) and is being released on behalf of Telecom Plus PLC by David Baxter, Company Secretary.
LEI code: 549300QGHDX5UKE58G86
About Telecom Plus PLC ("Telecom Plus"):
Telecom Plus, which owns and operates Utility Warehouse (UW), is the UK's leading multiservice utility platform, offering a wide range of subscription-style essential household services - energy, broadband, mobile and insurance; all these services share similar characteristics where the revenues and profitability are highly predictable, and where customers can be expected to remain with us for an extended period once all their chosen services have been successfully migrated.
Customers benefit from the convenience of a single monthly bill, consistently good value across all their utilities and exceptional service levels.
Customers sign up through a national network of local UW Partners, who recommend UW's services to friends, family and people they know.
Telecom Plus is listed on the London Stock Exchange (Ticker: TEP LN). For further information please visit telecomplus.co.uk
Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements
This Announcement may contain "forward-looking statements" with respect to certain of the Company's plans and its current goals and expectations relating to its future financial condition, performance, strategic initiatives, objectives and results. Forward-looking statements sometimes use words such as "aim", "anticipate", "target", "expect", "estimate", "intend", "plan", "goal", "believe", "seek", "may", "could", "outlook" or other words of similar meaning. By their nature, all forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they are based on numerous assumptions regarding the Company's present and future business strategies, relate to future events and depend on circumstances which are or may be beyond the control of the Company which could cause actual results or trends to differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements in this Announcement, including, but not limited to, domestic and global economic business conditions; market-related risks such as fluctuations in interest rates; the policies and actions of governmental and regulatory authorities; the effect of competition, inflation and deflation; the effect of legislative, fiscal, tax and regulatory developments in the jurisdictions in which the Company and its respective affiliates operate; the effect of volatility in the equity, capital and credit markets on profitability and ability to access capital and credit; a decline in credit ratings of the Company; the effect of operational risks; an unexpected decline in sales for the Company; any limitations of internal financial reporting controls; and the loss of key personnel. Any forward-looking statements made in this Announcement by or on behalf of the Company speak only as of the date they are made. Save as required by the Market Abuse Regulation, the Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules, the Listing Rules or by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward looking statements and will not publicly release any revisions it may make to these forward-looking statements that may occur due to any change in its expectations or to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this Announcement.
[1] Organic customer numbers exclude customers acquired from Talk Talk which have not been upgraded or cross-sold
[2] Organic service numbers exclude the services from those customers acquired from Talk Talk who have not been upgraded or cross-sold
RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services. For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange use the personal data you provide us, please see our Privacy Policy.
Latest directors dealings
- 5 hours ago ASOS
- 5 hours ago MJ Gleeson
- 5 hours ago Rolls-Royce Holdings
- 6 hours ago Crest Nicholson Holdings
- 6 hours ago Naked Wines