Two years ago, TPG Telecom was valued at less than $3 billion on the stockmarket. Significant, but not substantial, and certainly not among the biggest 100 companies on the local exchange.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Now, TPG's market capitalisation stands at $7.3 billion.
This places the cut-price broadband provider comfortably in the upper half of the S&P/ASX 200, and means it is now larger than some of Australia's most storied and best-known companies, including Fortescue Metals, Coca-Cola Amatil, Cochlear and Santos.
It is a fairly astonishing rise that is made all the more interesting by the highly reclusive nature of TPG's founder and CEO, David Teoh, whose 36 per cent stake in the company is now worth about $2.6 billion. Teoh rarely gives interviews and refuses to be photographed, which is in stark contrast to say, Fortescue's Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest.
On Monday, TPG entrenched its second-place position in Australia's broadband market behind Telstra when shareholders in rival iiNet voted overwhelmingly in favour of being taken over by the company. It starting to feel like, for the first time in a long time, the incumbent (Telstra) has a real fight on its hands.
Now we await Teoh's next move.
TPG's rise has been built on a simple formula: extremely low costs (sometimes at the expense of customer service), extremely low prices, and buying other companies.
There is already vague speculation Teoh might have his next acquisition target in sight: mobile operator Vodafone Australia.
Whether that transpires remains to be seen, but it's clear that TPG has arrived as a real force, not just in the internet industry, but in corporate Australia.
