BT cheered by sport take-up as top line stays flat

25th Jul 2013 07:04

BT scored a solid rise in underlying profit despite a slight pullback in revenue in the first quarter as it gained encouragement from the launch of its BT Sport channels. The telecoms group, which is taking on BSkyB on its sporting home arena, did see a 16% fall in reported pre-tax profits but when restructuring and pensions charges are excluded this reverses to a 5.0% rise to £595m.Chief Executive Ian Livingston said: "It is early days but we are very pleased with the strong start in BT Sport. More than half a million households have now ordered BT Sport and that's before the channels have even launched."The top line remains under pressure, declining 1.0% to £4,449m, although Livingston was content overall with the "good progress" and "solid" underlying growth at group level.Individually, the Global Services and Openreach divisions fell 2.0%, with the smallest division, Wholesale, the hardest hit with a 6.0% decline. Retail revenues were largely flat.Livingston, who is leaving shortly to join the House of Lords as the government's trade and investment minister, said the rise was in spite of the impact of regulation and the significant investments BT was making in its BT Sport channels and its fibre optic broadband network.Despite the investment in sport, capital expenditure decreased by 4.0% at group level, reflecting the additional investment in broadband and global services in the prior year. The investment in fibre is beginning to pay off, with take-up reported to be strong as the fibre network passed more than 16m premises with more than 1.7m connected. Livingston pointed to successes all over the business: "Our consumer line loss is at its lowest level in five years and we took a 50% share of the broadband market net additions. Our SME business grew revenues by 1.0%, the best performance in more than four years, and our BT Global Services order intake was up almost 50%."OH