r(Reuters) - Telecommunications company Spark New Zealand <SPK.NZ> reported a 7.9 percent decline in annual net profit, hurt by the implementation costs of a transition programme for the company in the current year.
New Zealand's largest provider of mobile phone services posted net profit of NZ$385 million ($255.49 million) for the year ended June 2018, compared with NZ$418 million a year ago - above the NZ$377.2 million expected by four analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company had earlier said its digitisation and automation programme called “Quantum” is moving at a faster pace and would see costs reflected earlier than anticipated.
Net earnings adjusted for the impact of NZ$49 million in costs associated with the Quantum programme came in at NZ$420 million.
The company declared a second half ordinary dividend of 11 NZ cents per share, matching last year's payout. It also declared a special dividend of 1.5 NZ cents per share.
Full year revenue came in at NZ$3.65 billion, up 1 percent from the previous year.
(Reporting by Karthika Suresh Namboothiri; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
