BT rises after quarterly earnings beat forecasts

BT Group, Britain’s biggest broadband and mobile provider, posted a second quarter earnings beat and forecast annual cash flow at the top end of a range, lifting its shares in a parting boost for outgoing CEO Philip Jansen.        

Shares in BT jumped 5% in early deals, good news for Jansen who is due to step down early next year and has long said he has been disappointed by the group’s stock performance. BT’s shares have fallen 25% over the last six months.        

Lower unit build costs in rolling out BT’s new fibre network helped boost profits and mean normalised cash flow for the 2024 financial year is now expected at the top end of its 1 billion pound to 1.2 billion pound range, the company said.       

“This was a decent set of results,” said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Matt Britzman. “Given the pressure shares have been under of late, investors should be relatively happy.”        

In July, the company named Allison Kirkby, a board member and the boss of Sweden’s Telia Company, as its next boss to replace Jansen.        

Her job will be to complete Jansen’s multi-billion pound push into fibre networks and extending 5G networks, the cost of which has hit free cash flow and weighed on the share price.        

For the three months to the end of September, BT posted a 3% rise in adjusted core profit (EBITDA) to 2.06 billion pounds ($2.51 billion) beating the 2.03 billion pounds consensus forecast.