Sports TV revs come onstream as BT makes steady start to financial year

Sports TV revs come onstream as BT makes steady start to financial year
Editor
| 27 July 2018


Marking its first quarter since it announced that it was replacing Gavin Patterson as its chief executive, UK incumbent telco BT has made what the company says is a good start to its 2018/2109 financial year.
BT sport 21 Jan 2017
For its first quarter ended 30 June 2018, BT Reported revenues of £5.715 billion, with underlying revenue down 2% year-on-year as regulated price reductions in its Openreach division — responsible for residential and business provision of broadband and fibre optic networks — and declines in enterprise businesses offset growth in consumer business.

The company saw adjusted EBITDA rise 1% to £1.800 billion mainly driven by stronger handset margins in consumer business and restructuring related cost savings. Reported profit before tax was £704 million while adjusted profit before tax up was up 3% compared to Q1 2017 at £816 million.

The company noted that at during the first quarter, BT Consumer revenue growth was driven by an increased mix of high-end smartphones, growth in it SIM-only base and, significantly, customers now paying for BT Sport. However, going forward BT expected sports rights and device costs to increase later in the year.

Making what is almost certainly his last comment on quarterly results, Patterson said: “We’ve made a good start to the year. We are making positive progress against our strategy. Our customer experience metrics continue to improve, and we have seen the successful launch of new converged products including BT Plus, our first Consumer converged offering...EE continues to maintain its network leadership and will switch on the UK’s first live 5G network trial in October. Openreach continues its FTTP network deployment and is currently building to c.10,000 premises per week. New Openreach wholesale pricing will incentivise communications providers to encourage more of their customers onto better services and ultimately move the vast majority of Britain’s homes and businesses onto superfast and ultrafast platforms.”