SP Telemedia on Tuesday reported a continuing operations net loss of $18.93 million for the year ended July 31, compared to a profit of $5.96 million the previous year.
Revenue from continuing operations rose five per cent to $446.45 million.
The company said the profit loss reflected the impact of $22 million of debt and commission write-offs, $6 million in costs related to its merger with internet service provider TPG Holdings Ltd in April and $7 million of other non-recurring costs.
"The debt and commission write-offs have principally resulted from call centre dealers and customers acquired through this channel," SP Telemedia said.
"This business model has been discontinued."
Looking ahead to fiscal 2009, SP Telemedia said it had lowered its guidance for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to $93 million, from the $100 million flagged in August.
"This guidance included the benefit of the surrender of a lease on the group's Perth premises, which accounting standards require to be included in the group's fiscal 2008 results, increasing the reported fiscal 2008 pre-tax result by $7.3 million," it said.
"This has the impact of reducing the fiscal 2009 EBITDA guidance to approximately $93 million."
SP Telemedia said most of the cost savings resulting from its $150 million merger with TPG had been obtained.
The company also said that despite a four-month EBITDA contribution from TPG of $24 million, that it would not pay a final dividend for fiscal 2008.
The junior telco earlier in the year paid a fully-franked special dividend of 2.4 cents per share related to the TPG deal..
The company also said it had achieved an underlying EBITDA run-rate of $22.8 million for the quarter ended 31 July and and $7.7 million for the month of August 2008.
SP Telemedia's EBITDA for fiscal 2008 was expected to be around $17 million, according to the guidance it released in August.
SP Telemedia, which operates under the trade name of SOUL, is 45 per cent owned by former parent Washington H. Soul Pattinson Ltd.
