betrayal!!, page-7

I believe Vodafone Australia had a profit of just over $100m last year.

HTA should be profitable this year or before too long.

$500m does seem a lot in payment. Although HTA were paying $250m annually in debt interest not too long ago so in context a once-off $500m doesn't seem too bad.

One way to view it is that the $500m payment is essentially for a 50% increase to HTA's customer base (assuming Vodafone's present customer pool is 2 x HTA's, although I don't have exact figures with me).

So someone could calculate whether the merger is good value for money by measuring that against HTA's current customer acquisition cost.

Assuming there are $2b in synergy savings to be made, including a sizeable element in operating costs, I feel this could be a big win for HTA.

However I would like see more info on how these $2b savings will be made and how much will be saved in ongoing operating costs. The announcement and the powerpoint presentation released didn't seem to contain a lot of information.

Hopefully HTA will announce some good results in the next few weeks.