BT Global Services

BT Global Services (formerly known as BT Ignite) is BT’s business services and solutions business, serving customers worldwide. It is an ICT service provider, offering integrated data and value-added services to meet the European needs of global multi-site corporates and the global needs of European corporates. BT Global Services now includes the former Concert managed services network infrastructure in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas within its business supporting the frame relay, ATM IP and other data services. The Global Products and Global Carrier divisions within BT Global Services reflect the majority of the results of the returning Concert businesses in the 2003 financial year.

In the 2003 financial year BT Global Services turnover was £5,251 million representing an increase of 17% compared to the prior year. The Global Carrier division reflected an increase of £744 million in the 2003 financial year to £1,007 million, principally due to the re-integration of the international carrier business of the former Concert global venture. Global Products turnover grew by 22% in the 2003 financial year to £1,883 million mainly due to the re-integration of Concert and the growth in IP VPN (Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network) products. Syntegra performed strongly in the difficult systems integration market with turnover of £623 million in the 2003 financial year, an increase of 2%. Solutions turnover grew by 11% in the 2003 financial year to £2,042 million and order intake in the second half of the year has been very strong, with total orders for the year of £3.6 billion, after a slow first half year.

In the 2002 financial year BT Global Services’ turnover was £4,472 million representing an increase of 29% driven mainly by Solutions, European operations and UK IP revenues.

Continued cost reductions, both in network costs as well as selling, general and administration costs, helped generate improvements in EBITDA before exceptional items in the 2003 financial year of 22% to £178 million, following an improvement of £96 million in the 2002 financial year. The re-integration of the former Concert business has had an adverse impact on the growth in EBITDA before exceptional items. The 2003, 2002 and 2001 financial years include leaver costs of £65 million, £55 million and £8 million respectively. Headcount increased by 3% to 17,200 in the 2003 financial year as a result of the re-integration of 1,900 employees from the former Concert business offset by leavers and reduced by 2,100 to 16,700 in the 2002 financial year. All major European operations achieved their target of becoming EBITDA positive during the 2003 financial year.

In the 2002 financial year an exceptional charge of £2,211 million was recognised principally relating to the impairment of the goodwill and tangible fixed assets of the European activities. This followed the announcement that activities were being streamlined to focus on multi-site corporate customers.

The group operating loss before goodwill amortisation and exceptional items increased by £74 million in the 2003 financial year to a loss of £427 million after increasing by £44 million to a loss of £353 million in the 2002 financial year. The loss in the 2003 financial year includes the adverse impact of the former Concert business.

Capital expenditure for the 2003 financial year was £439 million, a reduction of 28%, and £609 million in the 2002 financial year, a reduction of 35%. This demonstrates the focus on cash control and is reflected in the £202 million improvement in operating free cash outflow (EBITDA less capital expenditure) before exceptional items to £261 million in the 2003 financial year. This represents a turnaround of £624 million since the 2001 financial year.

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