Member Article

BT chief exec remains positive despite profits fall

Profits at BT have fallen from by 13% in the six months to the end of September, compared with the same period in 2012.

Reported profit was shown to be £948 million over the half year in 2013, while profit in the same period in 2012 was £1.09 billion.

Despite the year-on-year fall the telecoms giant’s Sports services attracted more than two million customers, and a futher wholesale agreement with Virgin Media will deliver it to a potential four million homes.

The firm made significant gains in free cash flow across its wholesale business, demonstrating a 144% increase year-on-year.

CEO Gavin Patterson said: “These are good results, with growth in earnings per share and free cash flow.

“This has been our strongest ever quarter for fibre take-up with Openreach net connections up 70%. Our fibre network now passes more than 17 million premises. It is open to all and many other service providers have now got behind it.

“BT Sport has made a confident start and is already delivering for viewers. More than two million of our customers are signed up to it and our wholesale contract with Virgin Media means it is available to around four million homes in total. It is also delivering for the business, helping us achieve a record 93% share4 of broadband net adds in the quarter, our lowest line losses for five years and 4% revenue growth in our BT Retail Consumer business.

“BT Retail’s Business division again saw good growth in IT services while BT Global Services and BT Wholesale both generated strong order books.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .