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BT’s 'very popular' sport channel scores again in fourth quarter

Published: 08:50 08 May 2014 BST

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The popularity of the BT Sport television channels helped drive record revenue growth for BT’s (LON:BT.) consumer business unit.

Launched last year as a bold and ambitious move to help capture broadband customers from BSkyB (LON:BSY), BT Sport has disrupted the football broadcasting market in particular.

Having initially bought up the rights to broadcast English Premier League matches the business put a further dent into Sky’s position by outbidding them for European Champions League coverage. It is paying almost £900mln (£299mln per year) for broadcast rights, starting in 2015.

Gavin Patterson, BT’s chief executive, says the sport channel has proved very popular with customers and it is now in around 5mln homes.

In the fourth quarter BT’s consumer unit increased revenues by a record 9% and the unit reduced losses to the lowest level for five years.

The company’s broadband business continues to experience strong demand, and it says the roll-out of the fibre network is ahead of schedule. Around 19mln premises are now connected via the high-speed fibre broadband network, it said.

BT revealed fourth quarter group revenues of £4.7bn, down 1%, and said it generated £18.2bn for the whole year, to March 31.

Earnings were up 2% in the final three months at £1.7bn, but were flat for the year at £6.1bn. Whilst reported pre-tax profits were 17% higher in the fourth quarter at £747mln and totalled £2.3bn for the year.

BT also said that the full year dividend would total 10.9p, which is 15% more than last year.

"We have made strong progress this year.  Underlying revenue, adjusted profit before tax and normalised free cash flow have all grown and beaten market expectation,” Patterson said.

He adds: "These results provide a strong platform for growth and from which to achieve our outlook for the years ahead.

“Our performance in the year means that we are growing our full year dividend by 15% to 10.9p and we now expect to increase our dividend by 10%-15% for each of the next two years.

“We continue to focus on improving the service we provide to our customers and delivering on our investments."

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