Written off as a utility, Chorus just posted a tenfold profit jump

From loss-maker to growth story

Chorus has spent years being the infrastructure asset the market couldn’t quite figure out. That looks to be changing. In its FY26 result released on 24 August 2026, the network owner reported net profit of $37 million, up from $4 million the year before, a near tenfold jump. Revenue edged up to $1.03 billion, operating earnings hit $726 million, and the dividend lifted to 60 cents per share from 57.5 cents.

This is the third straight year of improvement. In FY25 Chorus swung from a $9m loss to a $4m profit, and the half-year to December 2025 showed net profit of $15m against a $5m loss the prior half. The mechanics are structural, not lucky. Capital spending peaked during the ultra-fast broadband build and is now falling, while the copper drag that cost $39m in declining revenue in FY25 is nearly gone. Only about 44,000 copper connections remain nationwide after another 48,000 disconnections this year.

The AI thesis is getting some data

Chief executive Mark Aue is not being subtle about where he thinks the growth comes from. “The future is increasingly digital, AI-enabled and dependent on fibre. Chorus is uniquely positioned to power that future,” he said in the FY26 release. It is not a new line. Back in August 2025, Aue argued AI uptake would drive fibre demand and that customers would be satisfied paying “a little bit more, for a lot more”. The difference now is that the numbers are starting to give it substance.

Data usage rose about 9 percent across the year. By the December 2025 half, over 80 percent of fibre customers were on plans of 500Mbps or faster, with gigabit-plus plans now a quarter of the base. Fibre makes up 95 percent of all fixed connections on the network. The recurring bearish story, that 5G fixed wireless would eat fibre’s lunch, has not played out. Customers are connecting, consuming more, and upgrading to faster tiers.

$163 billion still sitting on the table

The economic case is the strongest part of the argument. A Deloitte Access Economics report from August 2025 found the fibre network had already delivered $31 billion in economic benefit between 2011 and 2023, adding $8.8 billion to the economy in 2023 alone. The projection is a cumulative $163 billion in GDP over the next decade. The striking figure is that only 16 percent of the network’s potential productivity benefits have been realised, with AI adoption cast as the mechanism to unlock the rest.

That is fuel for Chorus’s lobbying. The company wants a $1.5 billion public-private partnership to extend fibre from 87 to 95 percent of addresses. At its November 2025 AGM, chair Mark Cross made the pitch bluntly, arguing another $3 billion of fibre spend could deliver an economic benefit 5.6 times larger, against the 1.4 times return the government expects from Roads of National Significance. BusinessNZ has endorsed the extension as a priority for firms wanting scalable connectivity.

The regulator, not the market, holds the upside

Here is the catch the AI narrative tends to skip. Chorus is a regulated business. The Commerce Commission set total allowable revenue of $3.49 billion over the 2025-2028 period, with a wash-up mechanism that claws back over-recovery. If AI demand drives a genuine step change in usage and revenue, the regulator decides how much of that value Chorus gets to keep. In 2023 and 2024 the company was earning below its cost of capital.

That is not a reason to dismiss the thesis. It is a reason to understand what Chorus actually is. This is a regulated infrastructure asset with improving fundamentals and a credible demand story, not a tech growth stock riding the AI wave uncapped. For business readers, the more useful takeaway sits in that Deloitte 16 percent figure. The network is largely built and the demand is real, but most of the productivity dividend depends on firms actually adopting AI tools that consume it. The pipe is ready. The question is who plugs in.

Sources

• Chorus boosts profit as fibre use rises, predicts AI will drive up earnings (2026-08-24)
• Chorus posts modest profit, backs fibre as the future (2025-08-25)
• Chorus posts modest half-year profit (2026-02-23)
• Chorus HY26 Half Year Result media release (2026)
• Report sees billions in productivity gains from UFB fibre (2025-08-25)
• Chorus returns to profit, sees stronger FY2026 (2025-08-25)
• Fibre broadband priority for business – BusinessNZ (2025-06-25)
• Commerce Commission: Chorus Price-Quality Path 2025-2028 (2024-12-13)
• Commerce Commission: Profitability of Regulated Fibre Service Providers