Blue in mood, red in the face

Theresa Gattung delivers the company's quarterly results yesterday as Marko Bogoievski looks on. Picture / Reuters

What a difference three months can make.

The press briefing room at AAPT headquarters in Sydney yesterday was a fitting setting for Telecom's third-quarter results announcement.

Blue curtains, blue carpets, even chief financial officer Marko Bogoievski's blue shirt all reflected the mood of the day: blue.

Chief executive Theresa Gattung was considerably less upbeat than she was at Telecom's second-quarter results in Auckland in February.

At that briefing, Telecom executives had bad news to announce - the $897 million writedown of the Australian AAPT unit - but they were positively beaming about the company's stunningly good performance in mobile phones.

But yesterday's conference - two days after the Government announced a whopping set of regulations designed to break Telecom's phone and internet monopoly, which has so far wiped nearly $2 billion off the company's value - was a different story.

Gattung arrived and left the briefing without fanfare. She read through the results quickly, and seemed to frown whenever she looked down at her notes. She tripped over her words a little more than usual. The normally brash and confident chief executive looked almost modest, perhaps tired.

When asked if this had been the worst week of her life, the typically unflappable Gattung turned red.

"Maybe not actually," she shot back while assembled reporters chuckled. But the humour was short-lived. "Not going to talk about that. Anyway, it's Friday," she added.

She was similarly abrupt when dealing with questions about her pay. Much of Gattung's pay is linked to Telecom's stock performance, so the share plummet will have serious remuneration repercussions.

"Quite clearly, it has a direct impact on me," she said.

Gattung also stuck to several messages which she used to deflect questions. She refused to answer questions about the Cabinet paper leaked to the company, which detailed the Government's intended regulations.

"We're happy to fully co-operate with any Government or State Services Commission inquiry into the leak, but I'm not making any further comment about it," she said.

She gave the same response when asked if it was time for new management, or whether Telecom would fight the Government's regulation.

"We intend to get on with things, to remain committed to our customers."