Strong results29 Oct 2020 07:33
Philip announced our results for the first half of the 2020/21 financial year this morning. During this time, and since the start of the pandemic, BT has demonstrated resilience and strong operational performance right across the business, although considerable macro-economic uncertainty remains.
Philip commented: "The pandemic has underlined how critical our networks are, with robust demand for our core products and services. Our customers have continued to receive superior connectivity throughout the crisis, and the response from all of you has been exceptional. A fact recognised by the award of no fewer than eight MBEs to BT and Openreach colleagues in the Queen's recent Birthday Honours."
He continued: "This is a good start to our new ten-year ambition and strategy, but we face tough challenges and choices ahead. Our revenue and profit are down, and today's share price is far lower than the intrinsic value of BT. We know that we must become simpler, more efficient and more agile in order to create a business that is able to compete, with brilliant products and experiences at competitive prices."
Our financial performance is in line with expectations. Adjusted revenue fell 7%, primarily due to the impact of Covid-19, and adjusted EBITDA was down 5%, reflecting the fall in revenue, partly offset by sports rights rebates, savings from our modernisation programme and pandemic-related cost mitigation actions.
Since providing our outlook at our first quarter trading update, we have increased the lower end of our adjusted EBITDA outlook range for this year, to a range of £7.3bn to £7.5bn.
Looking slightly further ahead, and based on the confidence we have in delivering our strategy and transformation programmes that we set out in May this year, we expect EBITDA in the financial year ending March 2023 to be at least £7.9bn, returning to pre-Covid levels and with sustainable growth from this level forward.
The growth in EBITDA will underpin the planned reinstatement of our revised dividend while ensuring that we can continue to drive value-creating investments in our networks and products.
Performance against our strategy
Build the strongest foundations
Openreach is building FTTP at a rate of 40,000 premises per week, putting us firmly on track to achieve our 4.5 million target by the end of March
Strong take-up of FTTP across all of Openreach's CP customers, with sales currently at a rate of over 13,000 a week
5G is now live in 112 towns and cities – more than any other operator. We're also buiding the UK's first ever 5G Private Network, which will transform Belfast Harbour into a Smart Port
Trebled the number of 5G-ready customers between Q1 and Q2, taking the total to more than 1.2 million. We've also seen encouraging sales for the 5G-enabled iPhone 12
In the last five or six weeks, we've seen volumes into our call centres, online visits and store sales surpass pre-Covid levels
EE won all H1 2020 RootMetrics Award