Telstra has docked the pay of 10 senior executives over July’s nationwide outage, with more penalties possible pending the outcome of an investigation.
The company’s board of directors cut chief executive Vicki Brady’s pay package by $607,000 (US$428,000) for 2025-26, taking her total compensation to $6.8 million, 11 percent more than the previous year.
The board did compliment her overall performance, rating it as a four out of five and credited Brady with building on a strong leadership track record.
Shailin Sehgal, Telstra’s former head of global networks and technology who left during a restructuring a few weeks before the July 8 outage, similarly had his short-term incentive pay slashed by 20 percent.
The eight other executives who make up Telstra’s senior leadership team had their short-term bonuses reduced by 10 percent, for a total pay reduction of $1.3 million for the nine of them.
“There were things within our control that triggered the outage, and so they formed a view that it was appropriate to recognise that, and accountability was taken,” Brady told reporters on Aug. 13.
The board could elect to dock executives’ pay further, depending on the outcome of an external investigation that is expected to release its findings on the root cause of the outage later in August, she said.
About 30,000 customers contacted Telstra regarding the outage, and the telco had processed credits of almost $1 million for them, Brady said.
It was also working with a handful of its enterprise customers over the 11-hour outage, which Telstra said was caused by an undocumented network design change and an unapplied software update.
Telstra has not recorded any material impact in terms of customers leaving due to the outage.
“I don’t take that for granted, nor do any of their team at Telstra, and we do again really appreciate our customers’ understanding,” Brady said.
“We’re very, very focused on making sure all of the lessons from that outage are learned.”
The Australian Communications and Media Authority was conducting its own investigation and potentially could fine the telco up to $30 million, although Brady said it was too early to speculate on possible penalties.
Telstra also announced its 2025-26 earnings on Aug. 13, posting a net profit of $2.4 billion, up 2.7 percent for the year despite flat revenue growth of $22.9 billion.
Its mobile business brought in $11.4 billion in revenue, up 3.2 percent from the previous year, after two price hikes and customer growth of 274,000 in 2025-26.
Underlying earnings, before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, came to $8.3 billion, which was in the middle of its guidance range.
Telstra declared a final dividend of 10.5 cents, taking the total for the year to 21 cents per share, in line with expectations of a 10.5 percent increase in its payout to shareholders.
It also announced a second on-market share buyback of up to $1 billion after completing a $1.25 billion share sweep in June.
Around lunchtime, Telstra shares were changing hands at $4.75, down five percent from Aug. 12 and down 4.4 percent from 12 months ago.
EToro analyst Josh Gilbert said the results were steady and shareholder-friendly, and should give Brady some breathing room after she spent the past month answering for July’s failure.
But he warned Telstra’s dividend had done a lot of the heavy lifting for shareholders and at some point investors would want the share price to start pulling its weight too.
By Derek Rose in Sydney
