BT Ireland saw revenue rise 2 per cent to £661.6 million (€805 million) in the year to the end of March on the back of continued demand for its broadband services.
Profits, however, fell 5 per cent as a result of once off costs associated with the provision of new managed services contracts and restructuring costs within the business.
The company said its wholesale business continued to grow despite continued industry challenges with intensified competition, price erosion and market consolidation.
Growth in the wholesale division was underpinned by a number of new and renewed contract agreements as well as Sky Ireland’s successful entry into the voice and broadband market.
BT Ireland’s wholesale agreement with Setanta Sports, the exclusive distributor of BT Sport in the Republic, further contributed to this growth, it added.
BT Ireland’s chief executive Colm O’Neill said: “Our full-year results reflect our continued growth in the Irish market as we added new customers, including a number of global multi-national corporations and large indigenous exporters.”
“ We successfully delivered several large projects, while in Northern Ireland, the rollout of our world class fibre network has supported revenue growth as consumer demand for fibre broadband increases. In turn, we continued to manage our costs carefully and invested in our core network to enhance our service and better support our customers.”
Overall, the British company said strong demand for fibre broadband and television helped it report its first growth in consumer revenues in a decade and strong overall full-year results.
The 168-year-old former state telecoms monopoly, which has recovered from two major profit warnings in 2008 and 2009 by launching superfast broadband and a new TV sports service, said it would extend its share buyback programme and increase its forecast for free cash flow.
“These results provide a strong platform for growth and from which to achieve our outlook for the years ahead,” chief executive Gavin Patterson said.
BT reported full-year revenue, profit and earnings either in line with or slightly above forecasts, helped by the strong demand for broadband.
That helped underpin a 4 per cent rise in BT Consumer full-year revenue, its first rise in 10 years. Improvements at its Global Services division, the unit behind the 2008 and 2009 profit warning that handles the IT needs of multi-national corporations, have also helped. Earnings at the division were up 12 percent. For the total group, earnings were flat on the year before at £6.1 billion , despite the heavy investment needed in the sports division, and adjusted profit before tax was up 6 percent.
The annual results are likely to validate BT’s recent strategy of cutting millions of pounds in costs to enable the country’s biggest fixed-line telecoms group to invest in a more than £3 billion roll-out of a fibre network.
With the provision of superfast broadband increasing the range of services BT could deliver into a home, the company then moved into sports TV, stunning the sporting world in 2012 when it snapped up a package of English soccer Premier League rights.
Less than 18 months later it won the auction to show all European Champions League matches, proving itself an able challenger to Rupert Murdoch’s dominant pay-TV provider BSkyB and underlining its willingness to invest in new services to protect its core telephony and broadband business.
Reuters
