Really strong results announced by BT today – the Champions League has given a real boost to all sides of the BT Consumer business (ie phone, broadband and TV) both in terms of customer numbers and revenues.
See slides below for all the details – note that these are for the Consumer business – ie phone + broadband + TV:
Presentation – see slides 20 and 21:
http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperfor...316-slides.pdf
KPIs – see slide 4 (which is actually 5/11):
http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperfor...s/q316KPIs.pdf
Won’t list out all the numbers as they are on the links.
However the most noticeable (and remarkable) thing is that EBITDA - essentially Operating Profit (but before depreciation) for the quarter (ie Oct to Dec 2015) is actually up vs prior year – despite the first time cost of CL rights.
Now we should be cautious looking at just one quarter – EBITDA for the previous quarter (ie July to Sept 2015) was down vs prior year and there may be some other one offs this quarter (or in the prior year comparatives) which are providing a distortion. But, on the face of it, it’s a tremendous result.
If you work through the numbers the implication is that Operating Costs (*) for the whole Consumer business are very near to being flat – other than the first time cost of the CL rights.
(*) Presumably a significant component is the inter-divisional charges from Openreach for the “supply” of lines.
Looks like some major efficiency savings are being achieved - eg look at the reduction in labour costs on slide 14 of the presentation - though that is for the whole of BT plc - although some of this may well relate to Consumer and savings in Openreach may feed across in the charges to Consumer.