(Reuters) - Telecommunications major Spark New Zealand said on Friday it expects its core earnings for fiscal year 2018 to dip, because the implementation costs for a simplification programme are being recorded earlier than expected.
Spark said in a statement that core earnings for the year are expected at between NZ$971 million ($672.90 million) to NZ$991 million ($686.76 million) from an earlier guidance of NZ$996 million to NZ$1.02 billion.
It recorded NZ$996 million in core earnings in fiscal 2017.
The firm on Friday said it is accelerating its "Quantum performance improvement programme", an initiative aimed at making it the industry's lowest cost operator. It said it will record certain costs in fiscal 2018, instead of the following year due to a quicker pace of implementation of the programme.
It expects fiscal 2018 adjusted core earnings to be between NZ$1.03 billion and NZ$1.04 billion and reaffirmed its anticipated total fiscal 2018 dividend of 25 New Zealand cents.
(Reporting by Aaron Saldanha in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
