Virgin Mobile has announced plans to accelerate its growth as a result of its strong sales performance over the last three quarters, citing the need to capitalise on the current market opportunities.
The company is about to expand its distribution network to over 3,400 outlets as it moves into The Strathfield Group, C2One outlets and the franchised chain of Virgin music stores.
In order to enable the company to continue to grow rapidly and reach break even in 2003/04, Virgin Group will invest an additional A$68 million in Virgin Mobile Australia. The capital injection will be in the form of convertible preference shares and as a result it is expected that the Optus shareholding will be diluted over a five-year period to not less than 25 percent. Reflecting this, Virgin will take effective control of the business while Optus will remain as a minority shareholder and host network operator.
Recently Virgin Mobile Australia announced it had acquired 50,000 net new customers in Q1 of 2002, meaning it had doubled its customer base in six months and passed the 200,000-customer mark.
