Performance during the year

Operating performance

Objective	Performance
Safety	The major operational risks in our business arise from working at height and driving. During 2005/06, Wireless infrastructure had one employee lost time injury compared with five in 2004/05. As a consequence our lost time injury frequency rate reduced from 0.25 in 2004/05 to 0.07 in 2005/06.
Reliability	Our broadcast networks operate with an average availability in excess of 99.9%.
Efficiency	We achieved our target of £18 million annualised cash savings in January 2006, two months ahead of target. Improvements in multiplexing technology allowed us to offer a further three new channels for commercial broadcasting, bringing the total number of television channels to eleven across our two multiplexes.

 

Financial performance

The results for Wireless infrastructure for the years ended 31 March 2006 and 2005 were as follows:

Years ended 31 March	2006 £m	2005 £m
Revenue	325	208
Other operating income	-	3
Operating costs excluding exceptional items	(250)	(169)
Adjusted operating profit	75	42
Exceptional items	(5)	(13)
Operating profit	70	29

 

The principal movements between 2004/05 and 2005/06 can be summarised as follows:

	Revenue and other operating income £m	Operating costs £m	Operating profit £m
2004/05 results	211	(182)	29
Add back 2004/05 exceptional items	-	13	13
2004/05 adjusted results	211	(169)	42
Full year trading results and synergies	114	(81)	33
2005/06 adjusted results	325	(250)	75
2005/06 exceptional items	-	(5)	(5)
2005/06 results	325	(255)	70

The £114 million increase in Wireless infrastructure revenue and other operating income, £81 million increase in operating costs and £33 million increase in adjusted operating profit between 2005/06 and 2004/05 primarily reflects a full year’s (2004/05 seven months) contribution from the UK operations of Crown Castle International Corp., synergies and underlying profit growth.

Exceptional charges of £13 million in 2004/05 and £5 million in 2005/06 primarily relate to restructuring costs incurred in the acquisition and integration of the UK operations of Crown Castle International Corp. into National Grid Wireless.

Capital expenditure

Capital investment in Wireless infrastructure was £43 million in 2005/06 compared with £19 million in 2004/05.

The increase in capital expenditure primarily reflects a full year’s capital expenditure compared with seven months capital spending in 2004/05.