Wildanet Grows Revenue But Takes £17m Write-Down on UK Fibre Broadband Assets

After a turbulent year, broadband provider Wildanet, which is deploying a new 2Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) network across rural parts of Cornwall and Devon in England, has published their annual accounts to the end of 2025 and revealed revenue growth of 43% to £2.51m (2024: £1.75m). But they also wrote another £17.1m off the value of their assets.

Just to recap. Over the past few years Wildanet has come under many of the same pressures as other UK broadband ISPs and network builders, which typically stems from issues such as high interest rates, rising build costs, competition and the associated difficulty of being able to raise fresh investment. Last year this resulted in job cuts (here) and they then started 2026 by withdrawing from two of the government’s Project Gigabit broadband contracts in Cornwall (here).

The company’s latest accounts reflect the aforementioned changes and climate, albeit while reporting positive revenue growth to £2.513m (2024: £1.757m) and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) in positive territory of £4.277m (2024: loss of £4.306m).

Sadly, Wildanet also made a loss after tax of £30.202m (2024: £74.282m) and reported that it had fixed assets worth £45.482m (2024: £36.960m). The impact of earlier job cuts similarly showed in the company’s latest headcount of 179 (2024: 212).

Page 22 of the results then shows how Wildanet have acknowledged that some of the fibre network and other assets it had previously put on its balance sheet were no longer worth as much as it had assumed. This resulted in a £17.1m impairment charge in 2025, which follows an even larger £55.6m impairment in 2024. As a result, the value before impairment was £60.617m and it is now £43.520m.

The provider attributes this to various things, such as historical trading performance putting pressure on customer tariffs, withdrawing from the two Project Gigabit contracts, uncertainty over how much money their fibre network will generate in the future, general forecast changes, the cost of building, installing and operating the network etc.

In short, the economics of the network weren’t looking as good as originally expected, which is a common theme in today’s market. All of this is an accounting adjustment (not the same as actual money spent), albeit a significant one. Across the last two years, Wildanet has recognised roughly £72.7m of impairments.

Despite the challenges, Wildanet expects further growth of the business during 2026 as customer numbers increase and the network continues to expand. But at the same time, they warn that the “primary risks to the business in the short to medium term are in relation to the ability to build out our network capacity in a safe, efficient and timely manner such that we meet our expected growth in customer numbers and associated revenue.”