BT's third quarter financial results

03 February 2012

We have delivered another quarter of growth in profits and cash flow, despite the economic headwinds.

Our latest set of financial results, for the third quarter to 31 December 2011, was announced on Friday 3 February. Profit before tax[1] was up 18% in the period, to £628m; earnings per share¹ was up 13% to 6.1p; and free cash flow² was up £65m. Based on our performance we now expect to achieve our 2012-13 EBITDA¹ target of above £6bn a year early and to deliver free cash flow² of around £2.4bn this year.

BT’s Chief Executive, Ian Livingston, said: “Our investment to support our customers and improve our services has resulted in new contract wins around the world, with orders so far this year up over 50% in Asia Pacific and Latin America.

“In the UK, our fibre roll-out has accelerated, bringing super-fast broadband within reach of over 7m homes and businesses. We remain the number one broadband retailer with over 6m customers.”

Business highlights

We added 146,000 retail broadband customers in the quarter, representing 56% of the broadband market net additions³ BT Wholesale took around £340m of new orders, an improvement on previous quarters. And our copper line base grew for the fifth successive quarter.

We also announced ‘FTTP on demand’ - a technological development with the potential to transform the UK broadband landscape, especially for small and medium size businesses who need to send and receive large amounts of data.