BT posts strong rise in profits

BT said its annual profit was up 14 per cent as the company claimed it was overtaking its rivals in winning new broadband customers.

Pre-tax profit was up at £2.645 billion for the year to the end of March however, revenues at the group slipped 2 per cent to £17.85 billion.

According to BT, business was being driven by the consumer division which was offering Premier League football coverage.

The company added 121,000 retail broadband customers in the first three months of the year, leading to a claim that on this front, it had outpaced rivals Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin for seven quarters straight.

BT further said, it connected a record 455,000 new fibre broadband customers in the first three months of the year, a 31-per cent rise on the same period last year.

The group said good growth among householders "was offset by declines in our other lines of business".  BT Business was hit by lower call and line volumes as customers opted to use internet services instead.

The company had been looking to attract customers by securing sports rights and it  already showed Premier League matches.  It had paid £960 million for the rights to screen 42 Premier League games a season for three years from 2016-17.

The strong rise in Q4 and full year profit came in spite of the loss of major UK government contracts. Also the strong pound weighed heavily on sales in its IT outsourcing division Global Services.

According to the company, the gains were driven by continued cost cutting, and strong demand for super fast broadband and BT Sport.

However, overall sales slid 1.3 per cent for the quarter, excluding the impact of regulation.

The Global Services division suffered the biggest decline of 7 per cent, as it posted sales of £1.79 billion.

According to BT, the drop reflected  ''declines in UK public sector revenues'' and a £24 million negative impact from foreign exchange in the quarter.

Sales at BT Consumer, the group's next-biggest division, rose 3 per cent to £1.1 billion. Around 40 per cent of BT customers had now upgraded to super fast broadband with BT Sport signing up 5.2 million homes.

Gavin Patterson, BT's chief executive, said, ''Our superfast broadband network now passes more than three-quarters of the UK and we've announced plans to upgrade to ultrafast.''