BT Q3 results: telco’s share price falls despite positive quarterly earnings

BT saw its share price take a slight tumble in the early hours of trading on Thursday after the company revealed its revenues inched lower in its third quarter.

The British telecom provider’s share price fell as much as 3.6% on Thursday morning, but it has since recovered slight, with the stock sitting at 230p a share, down 1.71% as of 13:56 GMT.

BT results: key figures

BT reported revenue of £17.6 billion, down 1% compared to the same period a year ago, with underlying revenues falling 0.9%, as growth in its consumer business was offset by regulated price reductions in Openreach and a slump in its enterprise businesses.

The FTSE 100 company’s saw its adjusted EBITDA remain broadly unchanged at £5.6 billion, driven primarily by the growth of its consumer unit and cost-saving measures.

‘We have continued to deliver consistently against our strategic objectives in a tough market, resulting in another sound quarter of operational and financial performance,’ BT CEO Gavin Patterson said.

‘In Consumer we launched the next version of our converged consumer offering, BT Plus with Complete Wi-Fi. Following successful trials in London we announced our plan to launch 5G in 16 UK cities in 2019.’

‘Openreach accelerated its FTTP commissioning and has now passed 890,000 premises. We are ready to expand our FTTP programme up to and beyond 10 million premises if the conditions are right,’ he added.

BT share price resilient in face of stiff competition

Despite the British telco seeing over a 3% dip in its share price on Thursday, its recent trading update represents strong showing for the company amid mounting pressure from rivals in a sector where there is strong competition.

For several years, rivals like Sky, TalkTalk Telecom and Vodafone had piggybacked off BT’s Openreach network to offer their customers phone and broadband services.

But earlier this year, after rivals took umbrage with the rates they were being charged by BT to use their network, Talktalk and Vodafone announced plans to roll out their fibre broadband networks to cater to around 3 million premises – meaning that BT will soon lose sees it dominate position in the UK broadband market decline.

But even with all the challenges ahead, BT has left its full-year guidance unchanged and its CEO is excited about the future for the business as he hands over the helm to ex-Worldpay co-chief Philip Jansen.

‘Our overall outlook for the full year remains unchanged, with EBITDA around the top end of our guidance for FY 2018/19,’ Patterson said. ‘We continue to expect regulation, market dynamics, cost inflation and legacy product declines to impact in the short term before being more than offset by improved trading and cost transformation by our 2020/21 financial year.’

‘I am handing over the business with good momentum behind its ongoing transformation programme and wish my colleagues all the best for the future,’ he added.