London Full Fibre Broadband ISP CommunityFibre Reports First Profit UPDATE
Alternative network ISP CommunityFibre (CF), which has deployed their 5Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband network to cover 1.35 million UK premises (mostly in Greater London), has reportedly “posted its maiden profit” after recording earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of £8m in 2024. Customers also grew to 336,000.
The provider, which is currently being backed by funding of around £1.1bn, has had a rough couple of years due to the rising cost of build, strong market competition and high interest rates (a common challenge in the current market). This all caused a previous slowdown in network build and related redundancies during 2023 (here and here), which resulted in CF pivoting their strategy to focus more on growing customer uptake.
The current situation was well reflected in the company’s most recent annual accounts to the end of 2023, which were published in October 2024 (summary). At the time CommunityFibre separately noted that it had been EBITDA positive since April 2024, although the specifics of this now appear to have been confirmed by a new FT (paywall) report, which put the figure at £8m for 2024 (we’ll have to wait until later in 2025 for the full results).
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The ability to achieve a positive EBITDA (i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) can indicate that a company’s core operations are becoming profitable (banks use this to help assess whether a company is able to pay off its debts). But the catch is that it doesn’t fully consider non-core financial expenses, which can make a great difference to the financial health of a business.
As the newspaper noted, CommunityFibre is also expected to report a pre-tax loss of £118.5mn last year off the back of substantial investments in its network. By comparison, the operator’s most recent accounts reported total losses before tax of £134.6m for 2023 (2022: £50.4m).
The CEO of CommunityFibre, Graeme Oxby, said their latest preview of results for 2024 proved “broadband competition could be financially sustainable in the long run“. The provider is also said to have reported an 82% increase in annual revenue to £76m in 2024 (up from £41.7m in 2023 and £20m in 2022) and its customer base grew to 336,000 (up from 222,000 in 2023 and 310,000 on 24th Oct 2024).
UPDATE 8th May 2025 @ 8:42am
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Added the full comment from Graeme Oxby.
Graeme Oxby, Chief Executive Officer of Community Fibre, said:
“We are convinced that a relentless focus on network and sales excellence, lean operations, and industry-leading service is the foundation for success in the altnet market. Community Fibre has proven that new broadband competition can not only be financially sustainable in the long run, it can also deliver meaningful advantages to UK society.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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They put a box in N15 5JB on 2023 but did not activate the service. We are waiting for them to complete their unfinished work.
Is there any indication they’re starting their build back up? There’s some large gaps in North London that flipped from “coming soon” to “no plans” a couple of years back.
They won’t in any significant form any time soon.
Towards the end of their main build out CF were just going after overhead line areas. They were rushing to complete that land grab. Once they were done they stopped.
Now Openreach are mobilised in London and reapiring all their underground ducts, CF and others might go in after and overbuild.
But would it be a good decision to overbuild Openreach in these areas when the cost of debt is so high and Openreach would have already signed the customers up for a couple of years….
You can serve a street with poles in a couple of days and then come back and just run an overhead from that pole to a customer when they place an order, but if the street is fed underground you still have to get the fibre over someone’s drive/front garden even after all the civil works carried out to unblock/repair ducts in the pavements.
Does this include interest, loan and investment repayment, or just operating cost.
Literally written in the article:
“The ability to achieve a positive EBITDA (i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation)”
“earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA)”
@Gary H: No interest or debt repayments.
The meaning of EBITDA is literally in the article.
Very first paragraph of the piece.
It’s EBITDA – an American term for Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation & Amortisation. Basically operating profit, not net profit.
Interest will be on their debt to their lenders. Tax will be £0 as there’s no net profit. Depreciation & Amortisation isn’t really accounted for in the UK as we can’t depreciate our assets to reduce our tax burden like in the US, and we usually just do EBIT. It’s still often measured as that’s how they account for their net asset value (NAV). In CF’s case, this is mainly the value of their network equipment.
Its EBITDA so £8m before interest, taxes, depreciation,and amortisation are all deducted.
‘earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation’
So, no.
Congratualtions CF! This is a big step.
Now, lets hope they start building again as the boundaries of their network are a little weird at the moment. Not as bad as G.Network, but still big differences street-to-street with availability in West London.
Looking at their accounts that looks unlikely, They have a lot of debt and the cost of that debt increases sigighificanytly they also declared No dividend,
Thanks for that, BT Bob.