Rural Full Fibre Broadband ISP Gigaclear Summarises Annual UK Progress

Alternative network provider Gigaclear, which as of March 2024 has built a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network to cover 500,000 rural premises (RFS) in England (inc. 100,000 customers), has this week published their annual accounts to the end of 2023 and revealed some key figures for the year.

Just to recap. Gigaclear is principally owned by Infracapital, together with Equitix and Railpen. The company previously had investment commitments estimated to be worth up to around £1.1bn (here), although at the end of last year they also secured a £1.5bn debt facility (here) and recently won the £16.6m Project Gigabit rollout contract for East Gloucestershire (here), as well as the £26.5m contracts for North and South Oxfordshire (here).

The company’s annual accounts to the end of 2023 (here) naturally gives us a chance to see how Gigaclear has changed through the previous year, with the picture seeming to show an operator that is continuing to spend big while they scale up their build engine and prepare to deliver on those new Project Gigabit contracts. All this has been occurring during a period where many of their rivals have been force to cut jobs and slow their builds.

On the flip side, rural altnets like Gigaclear have been running for a while and thus carry a lot of debt, which is only going to grow as that build continues. In that sense, it’s good to see their customer base growing and general take-up still hovering at around the 20% mark, which should go higher once their rate of build slows in future years.

Remember that the figures below are to the end of 2023, thus the premises and customer figures stated above are slightly higher due to being a bit more recent.

Summary of Key Gigaclear Figures for 2023

➤ The company grew to 819 employees (2022: 670).

➤ Gigaclear’s network is now present in 26 counties of England (2022: 23).

➤ Built to a total of 166,252 extra premises during 2023 (2022: 118,000).

➤ Ready for Service (RFS) premises hit a total of 480,000 at the end of 2023 or 500,000 premises passed.

➤ Customers grew by 24,000 in the year (up by 41% from 17,000 last year) to total 92,000 (2022: 69,000).

➤ Gigaclear finished 2023 with customer installations reaching a monthly run rate of over 3,000 (15% of these also took their Home Phone service alongside broadband).

➤ Revenues increased by 32% to £33.8m (2022: £25.7m) – due to growth in their customer base.

➤ Losses for the year grew sharply to £138.3m (2022: £21.8m) – made worse by a market-to-market loss on their interest rate swaps of £23.8m (2022 had a £46.8m profit).

➤ Total assets reached £849m (2022: £701m).

➤ Total liabilities reached £845.7m (2022: £559.7m)

➤ Operating expenses for the year increased to £91.9m (2022: £63.75m) – in no small part due to Gigaclear scaling-up their build engine and upgrading systems, new staff etc.

➤ Total drawn debt grew to £657.6m (2022: £501m) – due to network construction work.

➤ The operator’s Trustpilot scored increased to 4.5 (up from 3.8).

➤ Revenue from the Government’s gigabit broadband voucher scheme increased by 28%.