FY18 financial results & events

"BT delivered a solid set of financial results in the fourth quarter, with growth in our consumer divisions offset by declines in our enterprise businesses, due to both challenging market conditions and our decision to exit lower margin business.

"We continue to invest for growth, having now passed 1.5m premises with our ultrafast network and securing 40MHz of 3.4GHz spectrum suitable for 5G mobile services. We are improving our customer experience across the Group, with our key metrics of Group NPS¹ and Right First Time² both strongly up.

"Our integration and restructuring activities remain on track. The integration of EE into BT is delivering run rate cost synergies of £290m. Our restructuring programme has removed over 2,800 roles and delivered savings of £180m during the year.

"I am pleased that we have reached agreement with the Trustee on the pension valuation and recovery plan, which is affordable within our capital allocation framework, and draws a line under a key source of uncertainty for our stakeholders.

"We have announced today an update to our strategy to accelerate leadership in converged connectivity and services. Our strategy will drive sustainable growth in value by focusing on delivering differentiated customer experiences, investing in integrated network leadership, and transforming our operating model."

“Our third quarter financial results are broadly in line with our expectations and we remain confident in our outlook for the full year. We continue to improve our customer experience metrics across the Group, with our sixth successive quarter of improved customer perception.

“We continue to work closely with the UK Government, Ofcom and our customers to expand the deployment of fibre and Openreach recently announced plans to accelerate our FTTP deployment to three million premises by the end of 2020.

“We agreed a TV deal with Sky that will deliver market leading sports and entertainment channels to our BT TV platform by early 2019, reinforcing our strategic goal of being the best provider in the UK of converged network services.

“The triennial valuation of the BT Pension Scheme is proceeding and constructive discussions continue with the BTPS Trustee. We still expect to complete the valuation in the first half of the 2018 calendar year. Our aim remains to deliver fair, flexible and affordable pensions to all of our employees.

“We are delivering against our strategy, capitalising on opportunities and responding to market challenges with a robust set of actions. Looking ahead, we’re confident in the steps we are taking to improve the performance of BT for all our stakeholders.”

“Our first half results are in line with our expectations as encouraging results in our consumer facing lines of business, notably EE, helped offset ongoing challenges in our enterprise divisions, in particular Global Services. Given our underlying business performance, we are maintaining our outlook for the year.

“As the UK’s leading converged telecommunications provider we continue to make positive progress on all our strategic priorities. Improving customer experience is critical to our success and we have seen continued positive progress underpinned by investments in operational improvements, increased network quality and customer-centric product development. Our integration and restructuring programmes are also on track to deliver run-rate savings of £250m and £150m respectively by the end of this year. We are working closely with the UK Government, Ofcom and our Communications Provider partners to find the right solutions to accelerate the deployment of fibre and our universal broadband commitment. We are committed to delivering ultrafast speeds to 12 million premises by the end of 2020. 

“From next year the interim dividend per share will be fixed at 30% of the prior year’s full year dividend. However, in this transitional year we are proposing to hold our interim dividend at 4.85 pence per share. Our progressive dividend policy remains unchanged.”

“BT has delivered an encouraging performance in the first quarter of the year. We’ve made good progress in our key areas of strategic focus: deliver great customer experience, invest for growth, and transform our costs. In particular, I’d highlight the growth achieved by our consumer facing businesses, helped by mobile.

“BT, with Openreach, is well placed to support the roll out of FTTP in the UK, and we’re consulting with Ofcom, Government and other communications providers to build the investment case to achieve this outcome.

“Our new Consumer business will operate our three distinct brands; BT, EE and Plusnet; to leverage our position as the largest and only fully converged player in the market, spanning fixed and mobile networks, consumer products and services as well as content.

“We will continue to simplify and streamline the business and rationalise our costs as demonstrated by our ongoing performance transformation programme. Our businesses are leaders in their core segments and as we drive the business forward I am confident in the outlook for our Company.”