Virgin Media O2’s results from its recent Q3 financial report shows the company is on track to continue targeted investments over the next year.
Wed, 13/11/2024 - 09:38
The BT Group published its latest biannual H1 FY25 results to Sept 2024, which reveals that the company is “firmly on track” to meet long-term cost savings and cash flow targets, and it can confirm EBITDA, capex and cash flow guidance for FY25, albeit on lower revenue guidance.
Financial highlights from the report show a decrease in BT Group revenue £10,138m (down from £10,421m in H2 FY24), alongside an increase in total reported net debt, up from £(19,479)m to £(20,267)m.
The firm’s profit after tax was up from £11m to £755m.
Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, said: “We have accelerated the modernisation of BT Group in the first half of the year.
“We’ve ramped up our full fibre build and connections, seen further improvements in customer satisfaction, and our cost transformation contributed to growth in EBITDA and normalised free cash flow despite revenue declines driven by our non-UK operations and a competitive retail environment.”
Kirkby commented that the nationwide full fibre rollout had “set new records”, now reaching more than 16m premises.
As a result of this, BT Group had further extended its industry-leading take-up rate to 35 percent, with continuing reductions in cost to build, allowing an increase this year’s build target to 4.2m with no additional capex spend.
The fibre build rate has also been accelerated again, and Openreach’s average FTTP build rate is now 81,000 premises per week (up from 78k), with an investment of £15bn to cover 25m UK premises by Dec 2026. Some 6.2m of those will be in rural or semi-rural areas.
Openreach noted that they have increased their FY25 FTTP build target to 4.2m premises “within our existing capex envelope driven by build cost efficiencies” and the operator claims to still be “on track to reach 25m by December 2026".
“We also expanded our 5G network to cover 80 percent of the UK population, more than any other operator,” said Kirkby.
“These investments in the UK’s next generation networks are enabling much better experiences, reflected in our improved net promoter scores.”
Openreach’s UK full fibre (FTTP) broadband ISP network also continues to grow, with an additional 2.1m premises to their coverage in H1 to cover 15.9m – up from 1.96m in the previous half.
The group also saw a take-up of 35 percent to 5.53m FTTP broadband connections made on Openreach’s network.
Kirkby concluded: “The accelerated modernisation of our operations, combined with a focus on connecting the UK, puts us in a strong position to generate significant value for all our stakeholders.”
