Telecom Lead Europe: BT Group’s revenue in Q3 2012-13 decreased 6 percent to £4.51 billion from £4.77 billion.
Revenue was affected by the impact of certain regulatory decisions, a £66 million reduction in transit revenue (including mobile termination rate reductions of £37 million), a £50 million negative impact from foreign exchange movements, and an £8 million impact from disposals.
Its profit before tax increased 7 percent to £675 million from £628 million.
BT says revenue trend continues to be impacted by the tough conditions in Europe and the financial services sector, regulatory price reductions and lower revenue from calls and lines.
BT Group said its Capex (Capital expenditure) dipped 14 percent in the third quarter to £572 million from £665 million.
“More than 13 million premises can access our fiber broadband and we are passing around 100,000 additional premises every week. Take-up is growing strongly with around 1.25 million homes and businesses now enjoying the benefits of faster speeds. This gives us an excellent platform for our push into TV and Sport later this year,” said Ian Livingston, chief executive, BT.
BT connected an additional 281,000 homes and businesses to broadband.
BT Global Services has secured £1.9 billion of new orders, up 17 percent.
All businesses — BT Global Services, BT Retail and BT Wholesale – reported negative growth in the quarter.
BT Global Services’ revenue decreased 8 percent to £1.746 billion from £1.894 billion.
Revenue from BT Retail dipped 3 percent to £1.793 billion from £1.849 billion.
BT Wholesale reported 9 percent decline to £890 million from £979 million.
BT Global Services
Revenue was down 8 percent, including a £44 million negative impact from foreign exchange movements and an £8m impact from disposals. It is reflecting the continued tough conditions in Europe and the financial services sector. Capital expenditure reduced by 13 percent as the prior year included additional customer contract-related spend.
BT Retail
Consumer revenue decreased by 3 percent with lower calls and lines revenue partially offset by growth in broadband, driven by an increasing contribution from fiber.
In the quarter we added 122,000 retail broadband customers, representing 44 percent of the DSL and fibre broadband market net additions.
BT added 200,000 retail fibre broadband customers and have more than 1m customers, representing 16 percent of our retail broadband customer base. BT added 21,000 BT Vision customers in the quarter and now have over 60,000 customers with a YouView box.
BT Wi-Fi minutes trebled year on year for the second quarter running and reached 3.9 billion minutes, with the number of hotspots increasing by around 40 percent to 4.8 million.
Business revenue decreased 3 percent with lower calls and lines revenue partially offset by growth in IT services.
BT Enterprises revenue was flat, excluding the impact of foreign exchange movements, with growth in BT Expedite offset by decline in the other divisions.
Capital expenditure decreased by 20 percent.
BT Wholesale
Revenue decreased by 9 percent, or 7 percent excluding ladder pricing, including a £67 million decline in transit revenue driven by both lower volumes and mobile termination rate reductions.
IP Exchange continues to grow with voice minutes in the quarter increasing by over 80 percent. BT expects revenue from IP Exchange in BT Wholesale and BT Global Services to be around £100 million this year. This quarter BT has supported the launch of 4G services in the UK through increased backhaul capacity at key base station sites.
Total order intake was around £400 million compared with around £340 million last year and has more than doubled in the nine months. BT signed a new five-year contract with BSkyB to continue to provide wholesale voice services for their off-network fixed-line customers, in addition to a number of new contract wins.
Capital expenditure decreased by 37 percent primarily due to lower spend on Ethernet, as a result of improvements in capacity management, and on Wholesale Broadband Connect.
