Australia's Telstra Group announced a A$1 billion share buyback on Thursday and reported annual profit of A$2.24 billion for the year ended June 30, up 3.2 per cent from the prior year. The result was slightly below analyst consensus of A$2.30 billion. Revenue in Telstra's mobile segment, which accounts for about 44 per cent of group income, grew 3.2 per cent to A$11.37 billion, driven by higher average revenue per user and mobile service revenue growth from a series of tariff increases implemented over the year.

Telstra declared a final dividend of 10.5 Australian cents per share, up from 9.5 cents last year, and forecast 2027 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation after leases of A$8.5 billion to A$8.8 billion. Chief Executive Vicki Brady said the company would continue investing in network resilience under its Connected Future 30 strategy. The announcement comes as Australia's telecommunications sector faces heightened scrutiny following a July software fault that triggered a nationwide outage affecting phone services, wireless payments and some rail services, Channel NewsAsia business reports.