Mobile bright spot in BT's figures

Mobile was a bright spot in BT’s less than stellar quarterly results. BT’s mobile division EE revealed operating profits of £137m for the second quarter of the year, a rise of £54m from the previous year’s figures.

That’s in stark contrast to the results of the BT group as a whole: revenue fell 1% to £5.9bn,while pre-tax profit for the quarter fell to £666m, compared to £671m for the previous year.

The company was bullish about its plans for mobile. The report points out that 4G rollout continues apace. “Our investment in 4G continues, with our geographic coverage now reaching 86% of the UK’s landmass. We have announced that we will upgrade more than 600 sites by the end of our financial year through converting 2G spectrum to provide airwaves into superfast 4G speeds. “

Better ARPU performance

The number of mobile customers now stands at 29.7m, a reduction of 500,000. This is entirely down to 1.3m of prepaid customers, as the net postpaid increase was 900.000 – thanks to 279,000 new customers. There was also a slight increase in average revenue per customer, both in postpaid and prepaid.

BT is confident that its plans for integrating EE into the business are proceeding smoothly. According to the quarterly report, “At the end of the first year we had achieved run rate savings of £150m. Progress in the first half of this year has raised the run rate savings to £250m and we remain confident that we will achieve our stated objective of £400m by the end of the fourth year.”