TPG Telecom’s FY25 results were covered by the Australian Financial Review with a headline that said “bolsters profits.” The same month, two sponsored content pieces paid for by TPG ran in The Australian – one written by the CEO himself. Neither the paid content nor the results-day coverage mentioned the $7 million pre-tax earnings base, the zero postpaid growth, the $115 million provisions jump, or the investigations building in the background. The financial press had access to detailed governance analysis months before publication – and chose not to pursue it. The stock dropped 2.7% on results day. 115,000 investors found the analysis elsewhere. This is the story of how TPG’s transformation narrative was purchased in one masthead and published unchallenged in another – while the numbers told a completely different story.
In December 2025, TPG Telecom’s CEO Iñaki Berroeta published a paid opinion piece in The Australian. It was labelled “Sponsored Content” at the top of the page. In it, he described TPG as a company that had “invested billions to keep Australians connected,” championed the MOCN network-sharing deal with Optus, and warned that rising spectrum costs could slow investment in Australia’s digital future.
The same day, in the same newspaper, a second sponsored piece appeared – an interview with TPG’s General Manager of Strategy, Jeremy Howe, promoting the MOCN’s regional coverage expansion. “More choice for the bush.” Data traffic up 90%. Download speeds up 300%. All presented under TPG’s branding, all clearly paid placement.
Two months later, on results day, the Australian Financial Review published its own coverage of TPG’s FY25 results. The headline: “Demand for Netflix-style mobile plans bolsters TPG Telecom profits.”
This one wasn’t labelled sponsored content. It didn’t need to be. It read the same way.
The Paid Version
Berroeta’s December op-ed in The Australian was corporate communications dressed in newspaper ink. Every paragraph served a strategic purpose:
The MOCN had “more than doubled” TPG’s coverage footprint. Network sharing was “smart economics and smart policy.” Spectrum costs needed to stay “fair and predictable.” And telcos had kept prices flat while other sectors had passed on inflation.
Not a single challenging question appeared. No mention of Vodafone’s flat postpaid growth. No mention of the MOCN’s first-year economics – the $122 million in costs against roughly $50 million in identifiable benefits. No mention of the ACMA investigation that was already active. No mention of the two Triple Zero deaths that had occurred on TPG’s network. And certainly no mention of the whistleblower investigation that had just commenced, or the CEO equity grant approved that same month while the investigation was live.
The Howe interview ran the same playbook. “First and foremost, we think it provides a lot more choice.” Regional customers getting better deals. Small businesses benefiting. Wholesale partners expanding. The MOCN presented as an unqualified success story – “data traffic increased by 90 per cent” – without a single reference to the metric that actually matters:
postpaid subscriber growth, which was zero.
TPG paid for both of these placements. That’s their prerogative. Companies buy media all the time. But the content of what they chose to promote – and what they chose to omit – is revealing, particularly in light of what the company knew at the time.
In December 2025, when these pieces were published, TPG’s board was simultaneously:
Approving a CEO equity grant while a whistleblower investigation was active.
Absorbing the fallout from two customer deaths linked to Triple Zero failures.
Managing an active ACMA investigation.
Overseeing a compliance uplift program.
The company chose to spend money promoting the transformation narrative in a national newspaper at the precise moment the transformation was failing to deliver on its most important metric, while governance and safety crises accumulated behind the scenes.
The Free Version
Two months later, on 27 February 2026, the AFR’s results-day coverage published the results-day coverage. The framing was strikingly similar to the paid content that had appeared in The Australian – but this time, nobody had to pay for it.
The headline: “Demand for Netflix-style mobile plans bolsters TPG Telecom profits.”
CEO Berroeta was quoted extensively. Felix was described as a “Netflix-style subscription model” that was “picking up customers.” A Morgans analyst was quoted saying TPG was “taking market share in mobile.” The CEO was given space to frame the postpaid market as “declining” and to position a new “digital-first” category as the growth story that mattered.
The framing was unambiguous: TPG is winning. The digital strategy is working. The transformation is real.
Here’s what was buried.
Paragraph six: Vodafone postpaid customer numbers were flat at 2.85 million. The premium brand – the one that generates the majority of mobile earnings, the one the entire $1.57 billion MOCN investment was designed to grow – added precisely zero net customers across a full financial year.
It appeared once. It was not explored, not questioned, and not reconciled with the headline’s claim that profits were being “bolstered.”
The share price: down 2.72% on results day. The market read the results, read the article, and sold.
The gap between the headline and the market’s verdict tells the entire story about the quality of the coverage.
The Netflix Illusion – Again
I wrote about this in detail in Post #38, published in early November 2025 – four months before the AFR article appeared and before either of the sponsored pieces ran.
The “Netflix of telco” analogy collapses under the most basic scrutiny.
Netflix retains subscribers for a median of approximately 31 months. Felix’s average customer tenure is estimated at less than 15 months, with churn running six to ten times higher than Netflix’s benchmark.
Netflix’s marginal cost falls with scale – more viewers watching the same content costs almost nothing incrementally. Felix’s marginal cost rises with scale – every additional gigabyte consumed on an “unlimited” plan directly compresses margin on a cost attribution basis.
Netflix generates genuine recurring revenue with high retention. Felix generates automated prepaid top-ups with high churn – a billing cadence that mimics subscription economics without delivering the financial characteristics that make subscription models valuable.
Felix’s ARPU sits at $25.75. Vodafone postpaid ARPU sits at roughly double that. Every customer who migrates from Vodafone postpaid to Felix is a revenue downgrade for the Group – substitution, not expansion. Cannibalisation dressed as transformation.
None of this appeared in the AFR article. The word “churn” did not appear. ARPU dilution was not mentioned. The structural economics of the “Netflix” comparison were not examined. The CEO’s framing was accepted and republished without interrogation.
And the paid pieces in The Australian had already set the narrative template two months earlier. By the time the AFR published on results day, the framing was pre-installed:
TPG is a digital transformation story. Felix is the Netflix of telco. The MOCN is a game-changer.
The coverage had been paid for in December and delivered for free in February.
What the Results Actually Showed
The numbers TPG reported for FY25 included:
Pre-tax underlying profit from continuing operations: approximately $7 million on $4.2 billion in revenue. A 0.17% margin.
Return on invested capital: 5.42% – below any reasonable estimate of the company’s cost of capital.
Vodafone postpaid: flat at 2,846,000. Zero net additions. Down ~15k in 2H25 despite $40m of MOCN costs and GTM spend.
Digital-first growth: 228,000 net mobile additions, overwhelmingly at roughly half the ARPU of postpaid.
Dividend: $335 million on statutory NPAT of $52 million – a 644% payout ratio.
Broker response: Macquarie cut FY26-29 EPS estimates by 73%, 62%, 58%, and 55%. Morgan Stanley Underweight at $3.50. UBS forecasting negative free cash flow in FY27.
$435,000 in discretionary executive bonuses on that $7 million earnings base.
Provisions jumping from approximately $2 million to $115 million with limited breakdown.
The analyst community read the same results and concluded the outlook was deteriorating. The AFR read the same results and wrote “bolsters profits.”
The Questions That Weren’t Asked
A results-day article on a $7.5 billion market cap company that has just reported $7 million in underlying profit might reasonably have explored:
Why did postpaid additions – the key metric for the MOCN investment – come in at zero – despite a $40m marketing cost on MOCN and GTM spend?
With Fixed representing approximately 23% of EBITDA and NBN SIOs declining 20k in 1H26, is Fixed now being managed for orderly decline – and if so, what is the end-state economics and cash conversion profile?
If Felix is growing but Vodafone postpaid is flat, what does the mix-shift do to group ARPU and margin?
Why did the stock drop 2.7% on a day when the headline said profits were being “bolstered”?
How does the Board justify $435,000 in discretionary executive bonuses on a $7 million earnings base?
What is the status of the ACMA investigation disclosed in the results?
Why did “other provisions” jump from $2 million to $115 million with limited breakdown?
How does the company intend to fund approximately $2 billion in spectrum renewals on current cash flows?
Is the business genuinely improving, or is the narrative simply becoming more sophisticated than the underlying performance?
If Vodafone complaints are surging 24% YoY while Telstra and Optus are declining double digits, why is TPG the only major moving in the wrong direction – and what does that cost the business?
With Felix ARPU at $25.75 – roughly half postpaid – is digital-first growth genuinely incremental or is it cannibalising the premium base at lower margin?
Back-book price increases lifted headline ARPU but net services revenue remained relatively flat (ex-MOCN costs) as churn offset gains. At what point do further price rises become self-defeating – and is management modelling the elasticity threshold?
Management indicated the MOCN requires roughly 200-250k cumulative net postpaid adds at $45 ARPU to break even. With zero net adds in year one and mix skewing to lower-ARPU promotional segments, what is the revised payback timeline?
Why has disclosure granularity on ARPU sub-components been reduced at precisely the moment when mix, tenure and elasticity matter most?
How many suburbs are currently on cease-sale due to Fixed Wireless capacity constraints, and what CAPEX is funded in FY26 to relieve them – given metro congestion is capping growth in precisely the highest-ARPU areas?
If a major competitor outage at Optus didn’t translate into durable share gains for Vodafone, what does that say about brand elasticity and conversion effectiveness?
With MyVodafone carrying over 4,000 one-star iOS reviews and management stating back-end development is past peak spend – when does the front-end rebuild begin, and is the current app state being modelled as a causative factor in postpaid churn?
How is dividend coverage maintained as accumulated tax losses roll off and cash tax steps up by an estimated $90 million annually, without further asset sales, higher leverage, or CAPEX deferral?
With half-year NPAT at approximately $32 million, at what point do investigation costs, compliance uplift, Triple Zero remediation, and complaint handling become material to earnings – and has the board stress-tested that threshold?
None of these questions appeared in the AFR article. None appeared in the sponsored content either – but nobody expected them to. The difference is that one was paid advertising and the other was supposed to be journalism.
The Pattern
TPG’s media strategy across December 2025 and February 2026 followed a clear sequence:
Step one: Purchase favourable placement in The Australian to establish the transformation narrative – MOCN success, regional expansion, digital momentum, spectrum advocacy. Berroeta’s own words, TPG’s own framing, labelled as sponsored content but formatted to read like editorial.
Step two: Brief journalists ahead of results with the same narrative framework. Felix as Netflix. Digital-first growth. Record customer share.
Step three: Results-day coverage appeared in the AFR using framing that, in my view, closely resembled the paid content that had run two months earlier.
The AFR didn’t invent the narrative. TPG’s IR team did. TPG paid to place it in December. The AFR ran it for free in February.
What Investors Deserve
115,000 investors have read my independent analysis of TPG’s FY25 results on Reddit. They found it because the financial press wasn’t asking the questions the numbers demanded.
Investors deserved to know that “profit growth” meant $7 million underlying on $4.2 billion in revenue.
They deserved to know that the premium brand added zero postpaid customers despite a billion-dollar network deal.
They deserved to know that Felix’s ARPU is half the postpaid number and every migration is a revenue downgrade.
They deserved to know that $335 million in dividends was paid from depreciation, not earnings.
They deserved to know that the company promoting its transformation in paid media placements was simultaneously managing two customer deaths, an ACMA investigation, a whistleblower investigation, and surging complaints.
This is not an allegation of improper conduct – it is an observation about narrative alignment. One masthead was paid for its coverage. The other provided it voluntarily. Neither told the story the numbers were telling.
That’s the gap independent analysis exists to fill.
📩 Right of Reply:
TPG Telecom Limited, the Australian Financial Review, The Australian, and any individuals referenced in this article are invited to provide clarification, correction, or additional context. Verified responses will be published in full and in context.
⚖️ Disclaimer:
This article represents independent commentary and analysis based on publicly available financial statements, regulatory data, disclosed information, and published media coverage. All views expressed are opinions, not statements of proven fact. References to “sponsored content” reflect the labelling used by The Australian on the articles in question. This does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. Readers should seek independent professional advice before making any decisions. All entities and individuals referenced retain the presumption of lawful conduct unless determined otherwise by a competent authority.
The author has an active dispute with TPG Telecom and has made protected disclosures under the Corporations Act 2001. The author holds a very immaterial shareholding in TPG Telecom Limited (ASX: TPG). These matters should be considered when evaluating the analysis presented.
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