The telecommunications company reported an operating profit of $471 million for the period, up 3.5% on the $455 million reported in the previous corresponding period (pcp).
Depreciation and amortisation fell this year by 4% to $215 million, helping push up the reported profit by nearly 13% to $178 million compared with $158million in the pcp.
An interim dividend of 11c per share was declared along with a special dividend of 1.5c per share.
Mr Verbiest said customer service levels had recovered markedly and several new market-leading offers had been launched.
However, some of the indicators in the results also highlighted the challenging market and operating environment and the need for Spark to maintain a fast pace of change and keep delivering for customers.
Total operating revenue was up 4.1% to nearly $1.8billion. Mobile revenue was up 4.4%, broadband revenue was up 1.5% and IT services revenue was up 19.3%.
Chief executive Simon Moutter said Spark was working with local fibre companies to accelerate the take-up of fibre through trialling initiatives such as "street-in-a-week".
"Outside the trials, we continue to work with the fibre network companies to improve the fibre provisioning process and eliminate pain points for our customers."
Mr Moutter told analysts New Zealanders holding out for the cheapest broadband they could find were forcing Spark to compete more aggressively on price.
Government data showed prices for telecommunications services had dropped 15% in the past five years. In that time, there had been a major overhaul of the sector with a third mobile phone operator gaining traction, network operator Chorus carved out of Telecom, and the roll-out of a government-sponsored fibre network.
Spark had been focusing on the higher-value end of the broadband market in recent times.
"A growing portion of the market is choosing to buy primarily on price — we’re seeing that across all telco portfolios irrespective of whether it’s consumer, SME, or big business.
"We can’t continue to try to steer our whole proposition to high-value markets."
The move is a throwback to when Mr Moutter was first appointed chief executive in 2012 and tasked his team with competing aggressively to maintain broadband share. The roll-out of fibre had seen more effort put into migrating customers to the higher-value fixed line delivery.
Mr Moutter said there were more gains to be made migrating customers to fibre, and that his rivals were paying too much to acquire new connections in what was largely a saturated market.
"It is something that frustrates us, the degree of competition driven by acquisition, which is just driving market churn. That is the state of the market today and we have to play in it and over time I guess it will become a bit more orderly."
Spark was rethinking its wider strategy, and Mr Moutter planned to put it to investors by the middle of the year.
The company is keen to shift its customers from the copper lines owned by Chorus, which had regulated wholesale prices. Of its 675,000 broadband connections, 138,000 were on fibre and more than 40,000 were on Spark’s wireless broadband.
Spark has previously signalled it wanted to cut its reliance on Chorus’ copper lines, and beefed up its call centre service capability after harsh winter conditions caused an increased number of faults last year. It also wants to have more control over fibre assets in central business districts, and this month began a takeover bid for Wellington-based TeamTalk which owned the CityLink fibre business and Farmside rural internet service provider.
— Additional reporting BusinessDesk
