Partner Article

BT profits rise

Annual profits at BT have risen sharply, despite reports of falling sales.

Cost cutting measures and one-off gains of £166 million from a large tax credit and interest from the telecoms group’s pension fund boosted profits. Pre tax profits were up by 42% to £2.4 billion, while sales were down 4%.

Chief executive of BT Ian Livingston admitted that the environment was “challenging”, but was keen to stress the growth of BT’s broadband business. In the past year, BT have added almost 590,000 retail customers, taking the total to 6.3 million customers.

The growth of broadband has compensated for the decline of BT’s traditional telephone service. Demand for the fastest Infinity broadband service has been strong, and BT added around 131,000 customers during the final quarter of 2011.

BT has also saved 4% in costs last year, which has helped them to boost annual payouts to shareholders. It also plans to raise the dividend by 12% this year.

Earlier this year, BT also pledged to pay £2 billion into its pension fund, one of the biggest one off pension payments made by a company. This is part of a 9 year plan to bolster scheme.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .