Latest / Best of Business / Andrew Fairgray: 2degrees Chief Business Officer on the company posting a $1.46 billion profit

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Andrew Fairgray: 2degrees Chief Business Officer on the company posting a $1.46 billion profit · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZB. Follow this
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  Speaker 2: Looking to the telco sector. Two Degrees posting another year
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  Speaker 2: of growth. Revenue up 5.5%. Profit before tax was $ 27. 4 million.
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  Speaker 2: That's a $ 50 million turnaround. Andrew Fairgray is the Two
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  Speaker 2: Degrees Chief Business Officer with us. Good morning.
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  Speaker 3: Good morning to you too, Mike.
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  Speaker 2: What's the level of satisfaction in this result?
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  Speaker 3: I think that we've been able to see continued growth
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  Speaker 3: coming on the Back of three years of integration shows
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  Speaker 3: that we have momentum that we continue to build on now.
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  Speaker 3: And I think as we are moving out of the
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  Speaker 3: integration phase into innovation phase, it gives us a lot
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  Speaker 3: of confidence that we're doing the right things to support
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  Speaker 3: New Zealand income.
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  Speaker 2: The revenue growth, is that eating somebody else's lunch or
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  Speaker 2: is it the market growing?
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  Speaker 3: No, we are definitely taking share in the market. And
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  Speaker 3: as we grow and leverage our scale that we've got
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  Speaker 3: since the merger with Vocus, we're seeing more and more
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  Speaker 3: companies and consumers look at our proposition.
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  Speaker 2: Give us an insight into how telcos work in this country.
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  Speaker 2: Are you directly connected to the economic conditions of the
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  Speaker 2: time that we so often talk about, or are you
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  Speaker 2: a completely separate market and people are doing their own thing?
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  Speaker 3: No, absolutely connected to the impact and the cost of
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  Speaker 3: living that's been occurring. Our overall ethos is to be
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  Speaker 3: the value player in the market. So we focus continually
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  Speaker 3: on trying to ensure that we deliver the best value
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  Speaker 3: around telecommunications to the New Zealand market and making sure
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  Speaker 3: that we're efficient how we do that so we can
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  Speaker 3: support New Zealand and can keep on growing.
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  Speaker 2: Where's the money? Is it in the big players or
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  Speaker 2: is it in the individual like me?
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  Speaker 3: Right across the board, right across the board. As a
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  Speaker 3: As an organisation, we have been very strong in consumer,
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  Speaker 3: but this year we're seeing growth across consumer, business and wholesale,
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  Speaker 3: and we're seeing we're making real significant strides in the
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  Speaker 3: enterprise and government space.
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  Speaker 2: What about AI? How much AI is in here?
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  Speaker 3: I think AI is just another tool. From our perspective,
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  Speaker 3: we look at how we leverage it in the organisation,
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  Speaker 3: but it's more used around considering how we redesign work
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  Speaker 3: processes and workflows. So We don't see it as the
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  Speaker 3: golden bullet. We see it as an enabler to support
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  Speaker 3: what we're doing to be more efficient and make sure
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  Speaker 3: we are truly that value operator.
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  Speaker 2: Tell us about the ground station and satellite and where
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  Speaker 2: that goes and what its potential is.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really exciting investment and partnership with AST.
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  Speaker 3: So we have our ground station in Martin. So that
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  Speaker 3: effectively allows us to control the data in our network
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  Speaker 3: and it gives us a seamless network. network from our
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  Speaker 3: mobile network into the satellite network. The thing that's unique
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  Speaker 3: around AST is from day one there'll be voice text
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  Speaker 3: and data so you can use any handset so we're
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  Speaker 3: really breaking down the barriers and as you know New
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  Speaker 3: Zealand being the way it's designed long and thin with
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  Speaker 3: population sparse areas it will just allow things for one
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  Speaker 3: search and rescue But we also think there'll be a
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  Speaker 3: big opportunity for internet for things, solutions for particularly around
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  Speaker 3: agribusiness and the like.
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  Speaker 2: All right, good stuff. Congratulations, Andrew Fairgray, who's the Two
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  Speaker 2: Degrees Chief Business Officer with us this morning.
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