Broadband ISP Zen Internet Top 225,000 UK Subscribers as Profits Jump to £3m
We’re playing late catch-up today with the latest company results for Rochdale-based ISP Zen Internet, which reveal that the venerable UK internet provider grew their broadband customer base to 225,000 at the end of Sept 2025 (up from 208k in 2024) and saw operating profit jump from £1.9m to £3m – partly fuelled by the sale of some IPv4 address blocks.
The company’s full year revenues increased by 5% to £127m (2024: £121m), while EBITDA (i.e. earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) grew to £7.1m (2024: £5.7m), Zen’s net assets totalled £30.3m (2024: £28.4m) and their gross profit grew by 17.2% (2024: 19.9%).
The reduction in gross profit compared with 2024 is largely down to the fact that Zen’s supply chain costs of providing their services have risen, but the ISP didn’t pass most of that on to their customers due to their price promise guarantees (bigger ISPs rarely do the same). Zen has also faced some costs from migrating end-users away from legacy copper services to “lower margin full fibre” lines.
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Otherwise, Zen said much of the growth in their consumer broadband base (up 15%) came from newer full fibre services and their partnership with CityFibre. On the flip side some customer losses were recorded in their business and partner divisions, which meant the overall broadband base grew by 8% (this is still up from 5% in 2024).
The improvement in EBITDA and operating profit is more interesting, since this is said to be the “result of the profit on disposal of £4.8m made on the sale of IPv4 address blocks and income from [alternative network] integration arrangements of £1.3m (2024 – £0.2m).” This perhaps give context to some of Zen’s recent IP address migrations (here).
Zen are reinvesting this into their technology resources, AltNet aggregation work (Fibre Hub), greater use of AI and customer self-serve applications. Some £2.1m of capital was invested by Zen into its core business in the year (2024: £2.9m).
Finally, Zen’s results revealed that the operator had a total staff count of 569, which is unchanged from the previous year.
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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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I am not a finance brain, but if profits of £3m were achieved in a year when £4.8m of IP addresses were sold, is there not an underlying loss there? They can only sell their assets once, they seem to be flogging IP addresses to cover operating losses.
Guessing this balances against the investment in other areas, like the new Fibre Hub, and losses in their business and partner base etc.
I noticed that they’ve increased their minimum contract from 18 months to 24 months recently as well. In a sense, that’s a good thing because they still have the “no in-contract price rise” policy, but it does feel like a step towards being similar to other ISPs.
They have previously been very fair to me in pricing – earlier in the year, they lowered their monthly price by £5 days after I’d signed a new contract, and they were fair in changing me over to the new price. I hope this sort of attitude continues at Zen because it’s a big selling point.
On the flip side, I am slightly disappointed as I contacted them a few days after being transferred from VDSL to their FTTP service but received no reply when I enquired about the sudden £5 reduction in monthly rental for new connections. I am a 20+ years Zen customer but know that this means nothing in today’s marketplace!
However, they now appear to be making an effort by reducing their pricing right up to the 900 connection products which is attractive for a possible upgrade of my “rock solid” speed and connection.
@MissTuned, sadly all of them seems to be going to 24 months, be nice to have a choice. The provider I am with has a choice and I did sign up to 24 months this time with a good deal.
I realise Zen is in a different bracket to most providers, I would put them in the A&A ISP bracket, but maybe better priced. They are a company that cares more about customer service than your normal Sky, BT and even some Altnets providers. But you pay for that, which is one of the reason for a higher price. If my broadband were critical, then yes I would have gone for Zen.
I am glad they are doing good and making money.
Zen have a mantra to do best for people and planet which is all well and good but staff numbers of 569 seems quite high and could surely be reduced? Even if only by 10-20 as they leave/retire, by not replacing them.
That would instantly add £250k-£500k, perhaps double that or more depending on seniority, to the bottom line.
Money which could be reinvested in to the business or cutting bills.
It seems like a nice place to work from the videos but that tends to stymie innovation somewhat as people make themselves busy not doing very much, i.e. paper pushing. They do no wish to innovate and therefore do themselves out of a job.
How many staff “should” Zen’s business be employing?
What a wonderful attitude you have. “Let’s get rid of some people so that we can make more money”.
They are doing that already. Richard Tang was saying in one of his recent vids how they had not replaced 10 departing technical support staff due to their adoption of AI. I think it shows as their customer support is quite poor now. Also I believe most of their growth in customer numbers has come from buying customers from other ISP rather than organic growth.
@Andrue, sadly that is what most companies’ attitude is, maybe James runs a company or is a manager, sadly most of them seems to be the same.
i worked for a large company and I saw it there, both with the managers where I worked and at head office. How much more can we make if we get rid of this many people, stuff the fact that the people left have to work twice as hard
It is nice to see a company that thinks differently, at the moment.