BT Group H2 2025 Earnings Report

BT Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 18.80
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

BT Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

BT Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2025
• Date: 5/22/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

BT Group is the UK’s leading provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications and related secure digital products, solutions and services. We also provide managed telecommunications, security and network and IT infrastructure services to customers across 180 countries. BT Group consists of three customer-facing units: Consumer serves individuals and families in the UK; Business* covers companies and public services in the UK and internationally; Openreach is an independently governed, wholly owned subsidiary wholesaling fixed access infrastructure services to its customers - over 650 communication providers across the UK. British Telecommunications plc is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group (LON:BT.A) and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange. For more information, visit www.bt.com/about *Business was formed on 1 January 2023 from the combination of the former Enterprise and Global units. It commenced reporting as a single unit from 1 April 2023, with pro forma reporting information to be produced ahead of BT Group’s Q1 FY24 results.

BT Group H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Record full-fibre build and connections: Openreach built 4.3 million premises at budgeted cost, raising its FTTP footprint above 18 million and connecting 6.8 million homes, with plans to pass a further 5 million this year.
• Normalized free cash flow jumped to £1.6 billion, beating guidance, and management has raised its dividend to 8.16 pence per share while targeting £2 billion of cash flow in FY 2027 and £3 billion by 2030.
• Group revenue slipped 2% to £20.4 billion, with UK service revenue down 1%, as legacy voice declines (ahead of the 2027 PSTN switch-off) and fixed broadband line losses weighed on topline performance.
• Customer satisfaction and monetization improved: net promoter scores rose across all divisions, broadband ARPU grew 6%, and convergence in Consumer saw the converged base reach 25% alongside industry-leading mobile churn of 1%.
• International segment revenue fell 9% on FX and weaker trading; BT has carved it out under focused leadership and is exploring options to optimize its portfolio and returns.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome everyone to BT Group's results presentation for the full year ended 03/31/2025. Presenting today are Alison Kirkby, chief executive, and Simon Louth, CFO. Following the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I would like to make everyone aware that this event is being recorded for replay purposes. Before we start, I'd like to draw your attention to the forward looking statements caution in the presentation and press release for examples of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from any forward looking statements we may make.

[Operator]

Both the press release and the presentation can be found on our website. With that, I'll now hand over to Alison.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Thank you, Nick, our new chatbot. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our full year results presentations, and thank you so much for joining us today on this sunny morning. By way of an agenda, I'll be starting by looking back our progress in the past year, and then I'll hand over to Simon to talk about the financials. Then we'll set out more detail on our strategy, our plans and our outlook for the year ahead. And of course, Simon and I will be taking your questions at the end.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We're also joined, I'm delighted to say, in the audience by two long standing colleagues, Clive and Howard, and three new ones, Claire, John and Tom. So please do feel free to say hello at the end of the meeting. We won't invite them for Q and A, otherwise you'll be here all day. But let me start first with our full year highlights on Slide four. It's been a busy year for all of us at BT.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We've continued to deliver on our strategy by building and connecting customers to next generation networks at pace, by improving customer experience and by modernizing and simplifying. We broke records on full fiber build and connections and on mobile network performance. Our NPS jumped in all of our customer facing divisions, and we delivered transformation benefits ahead of plan. And we continue to simplify, shutting down noncore activities and selling businesses in Ireland and since year end Italy, all with the ultimate aim to sharpen both our focus and our capital allocation. This focus and accelerated transformation helped us more than offset revenue pressure to deliver EBITDA growth and a better than expected £1,600,000,000 of normalized free cash flow even as we invested at close to peak levels.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

In fact, the highest investment into The UK of any FTSE one hundred company. Reflecting this performance and our confidence in cash flow expansion, we're now increasing our dividend. Our total dividend will increase to 8.16p per share, in line with our progressive dividend policy. And we're continuing to target normalized free cash flow of £2,000,000,000 in fiscal year twenty twenty seven, which is now just one year away and rising to £3,000,000,000 by the end of the decade. Considering the clear benefits of full fiber for our customers in defending our market position and ultimately growing our enterprise value, I'm also very pleased to announce that we're going to push on even faster this year and pass up to 5,000,000 homes so that by the time we're here next year, we'll have reached 23,000,000 homes and businesses and connected close to 9,000,000 of them, more of that later in the presentation.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

But first, let's reflect on how we've performed in each of our customer facing units. In Openreach, we delivered a record year in build, in provisions, in revenue, in EBITDA and in customer satisfaction. Our full fibre footprint today stands at more than 18,000,000 premises, reaching over half the country. And thanks to greater build efficiency, we built a record £4,300,000 for the same budgeted cost as for the £4,000,000 that we'd originally planned for when we came into the year. Customer demand has remained very strong with 6,500,000 homes and businesses connected by the March and in fact £6,800,000 already at the end of just last week.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

This means our market leading take up actually increased during the year from 34% to 36% and hit 37% in the last few weeks even while we've been passing so many new premises. Broadband ARPU has grown 6% driven by CPI and better than planned upsell to higher speeds with a 3% overall broadband revenue growth despite the higher line losses. And with ARPU up 5% in our £1,000,000,000 Ethernet business, revenues grew a further 8%. In addition, our transition to fiber drove faults down by around 10% in the year. And in copper and Ethernet, we continue to meet all Ofcom quality of service standards, and we also have an excellent trust pilot rating across both copper and fiber.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

All of this drove growth in NPS and in EBITDA well ahead of revenue growth. Finally, we've already won seven Type C project gigabit contracts, covering 300,000 hard to reach premises with a value of over £700,000,000 We've also taken over two substantial contracts where other suppliers have struggled, both of which will allow us to gain further momentum in the coming years. The area where we haven't been happy, of course, is in line losses. We always expected some share loss, but within a growing market. Instead, the fixed broadband market shrank slightly in the last year, creating a headwind of a few hundred thousand lines compared to the previous trend.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And based on our data, we think there is some post COVID and cost of living reset going on in the market as a whole. At the same time, in areas where we don't have full fiber or our CPs are not investing to maintain their market position, our losses are higher. However, the positive also remains as in areas where we do have full fiber, we lose much less. So our best defense, therefore, remains to continue building and connecting faster and more efficiently than anyone else. And as I said, we're now going to accelerate further this year to address the growing demand and bring forward higher connections and higher ARPUs.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Let's now move to Consumer. We delivered a solid performance in what was a year of transition after heightened inflation on our back book over the last three years. In line with what I said last May, the second half did see a return to service revenue growth, and we expect a similar seasonal pattern in this coming year. After several years of both a declining customer base and market share, it was clear coming into last year that we needed to stabilize at some point. So despite the competitive market, I'm very pleased to say that our broadband base grew in the final quarter for the first time since December 2021.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

That was due to us better leveraging all three of our brands, but particularly EE and BT. Our mobile base was also stable in the year. And on ARPUs, we achieved a slight increase in broadband and we were stable for mobile despite ongoing shifts to SIM only. Churn had a small increase in broadband, but a fall to 1% for mobile, helped in part by our new EE1 proposition, which is successfully growing household penetration, loyalty, you saw in our churn and our converged base. And our converged base now is actually growing up two percentage points to 25%.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We're continuing to proactively upgrade our customers to the best available network in the geographic area with our full fiber base up over 30% to 3,200,000. Five gs connections also grew up 10% and our mobile network won best network for the eleventh year in a row with RootMetrix for the tenth year in a row with Umlaut Connect, and we also recorded the best five gs availability with Speedtest. All of these improved network and convergence experiences clearly boosted NPS, which increased across all three of our brands. And I'm delighted to see all our brands score well this morning in Ofcom's customer service comparison with EE the best performing MNO overall and Plusnet, EE and BT in the top four for broadband. Finally, I'm very proud that EE took the lead and issued age guidance for smartphone usage last August.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And at the other end of the generational spectrum, I'm proud of the enhanced support that we are giving to vulnerable customers ahead of the switch to digital landlines. Both are evidence of our commitment to our purpose to connect for good. Moving to Slide seven. Business has continued to focus its turnaround efforts by simplifying and transforming to next generation products and solutions, but is clearly impacted by ongoing drags from legacy products. In The UK, revenue fell 1%, but this is more than accounted for by the fall in traditional voice, which as we know will slow with PSTN switch off in January 2027.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Within SMB, the trajectory of service revenue was very similar to Consumer with a recovery in the second half, but weighed down by lower equipment sales. In Corporate and Public Sector, we were very pleased to broaden the emergency services network contract for a further seven years. And at the end of the year, we saw excellent wins, including with DEFRA, which will contribute to further improved performance in the future. Like in Consumer, we're also seeing substantial growth in our fiber and five gs basis and to note almost three quarters of our voice customers are now on Voice over IP. That being said, UK Connectivity revenues did fall 3%, but grew if you exclude traditional voice and UK managed services also grew 2%.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

This underlying growth and our improving NPS speak to the relatively seamless way in which we are managing these migrations and to the strength of relationships we have with our customers, large and small throughout the country. Moving to International. Revenue fell 9%, driven by weaker trading and FX. Essentially, challenge for business as a whole remains the speed at which we move off of legacy services, digitalize our customer journeys and our effectiveness at offsetting rising costs with pricing in what has been a tricky environment for our customers. That's what we've seen this past year, and that's what we've factored into the same for the outlook for the coming year.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

But having carved out the International segment, we now have focused leadership teams in both parts of the business to help us address the opportunities that we now see ahead. So let me now hand over to Simon to take you through the numbers in a little bit more detail.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Thanks, Alison. So good morning to you all. I'm going to start with the individual unit results on Slide nine. Consumer revenue was down 1% for the year. That was mainly due to lower handset sales volumes.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Adjusted service revenue declined 0.4% for the year due to lower average customer bases through the year, only partly offset by the higher broadband ARPU. But despite this, we returned to service revenue growth in H2 and the broadband base grew in Q4. Consumer EBITDA declined by 1% driven by the flow through of service revenue and some higher input costs, partly offset by strong cost controls and some one offs of mid tens of millions of pounds. Business revenue was down 4%. That was driven primarily by international trading alongside a £56,000,000 adverse impact from FX.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

UK revenue was 1% lower. Declines in legacy voice products ahead of the PSTN switch off in 2027 were only partly offset by the easier comparator from last year's revenue adjustment. Business EBITDA declined by 6% for the year reflecting the flow through of revenue from high margin legacy products, partly offset by tight cost management and the ongoing modernization activity. Q4 EBITDA benefit of the prior year revenue adjustment was largely offset by the quarterly phasing of our corporate and network costs. Openreach grew revenue 1% in the year driven by CPI linked price increases, the increased FTTP mix in broadband and Ethernet volume growth.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

This was partially offset by declines in the base of broadband and voice only lines. Q4 revenue growth was negatively impacted by the phasing of commercial and some storm related rebates. Oprioit adjusted EBITDA grew by 5%. This was driven by the revenue flow through and the continued cost transformation including the benefit of lower fault rates, lower total labor resource and lower energy costs, all partly offset by the pay inflation. Our other EBITDA out turned at zero for the year.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

So moving to look at our group results now on slide 10. Adjusted revenue for the year was £20,400,000,000 that's down 2%. It was at the bottom end of our revised guidance range. Revenue declines in Consumer and Business were only partially offset by that growth in Openreach. Adjusted UK service revenue fell 1% in the year, but it grew in the second half.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Adjusted operating costs before depreciation, they were down 3% due to the cost transformation and the tight expenditure controls. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was £8,200,000,000 that is up 1% and it's in line with our guidance. Strong delivery from our cost transformation programs more than offset the revenue pressure. CapEx came in at £4,900,000,000 for the year, it's broadly flat. This was achieved while Openreach built Full Fiber to 4,300,000 premises, exceeding the revised build target set at H1 and delivering record provisioning volumes.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

We largely absorbed the increased Full Fiber volumes through a combination of lower unit costs in Openreach and significantly improved IT development efficiencies in our digital unit. Cash CapEx was slightly higher than reported CapEx due to around about £100,000,000 of grant funding gain share partially offset by the timing of capital creditor payments. Normalized free cash flow increased 25% year on year to £1,600,000,000 1 hundred million pounds ahead of our guidance. Now compared to FY 2024, EBITDA growth, a reduced working capital outflow and a £95,000,000 tax receipt more than offset higher interest costs. We delivered our cash flow performance while also achieving the new fair payment code silver standard.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

The IS-nineteen pension deficit fell by £700,000,000 mainly due to scheduled contributions partly offset by lower than assumed asset returns. The funding in IS-nineteen deficits at the April were largely unchanged despite the last month's market volatility following The U. S. Tariff announcements. And as Alison just announced, we're proposing a final dividend of 5.76p per share, making the FY 2025 full year dividend 2% higher at 8.16p per share.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

And now Alison, back to you.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Thank you, Simon, as we dance across the stage. So as I said last year and it remains so today, it really is a huge privilege to lead a company like BT. And since stepping into the role fifteen months ago, my priority has been to sharpen our strategy, focus on The UK and ensure we have the team and the delivery muscle to build a better BT for all. As you know, our ambition is to become The UK's most trusted connector of people, business and society, guided by our purpose to connect for good. Our strategy focuses on three things: building the best, most trusted digital networks connecting customers so they thrive as we grow in a digital world and accelerating our modernization to restore leadership in everything we do.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

By the end of the decade, this strategy will deliver for all of us, and it will deliver the financial commitments of service revenue growth, EBITDA growth ahead of revenue and in close to doubling of this year's normalized free cash flow. That's a near 20% compound growth rate. Let me unpack each of our strategic priorities in turn. First, we've been getting on with building the country's digital backbone faster, further and more efficiently than anyone. We know that the more fiber we build, the more customers choose to connect to us, so we will keep going until we reach £30,000,000 and we will be the only nationwide fiber platform.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Beyond fiber, we have the best and the most resilient mobile network and we will work constantly to improve it. And we will now aim to offer seamless connectivity so that our customers can uniquely connect effortlessly across the best fixed access, the best mobile access and via our unique network of over 5,000,000 WiFi hotspots that we now intend to upgrade. And finally, we'll continue to innovate for our customers from the NHS to small businesses and households and for the country via AI and quantum secure networks and whatever comes next. After we build, we connect so that we grow. We are proud custodians of some of The UK's most loved and trusted brands, BT, EE and Plusnet.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Each has a deep connection with customers and communities nationwide. We have the best and safest connectivity products that differentiate us, whether that be WiFi seven for consumers or DDoS Lite to protect smaller businesses. And we are improving customer experience and loyalty mechanisms as we increasingly digitalize our operations and improve services. We also know that our customers will be better on BT and so do the world's leading companies who partner with us. Together, we go beyond connectivity into new verticals such as TV and gaming experiences and offering services that resonate with our most trusted status such as cloud solutions and security.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So we build, we connect, but we also need to accelerate our modernization to restore leadership in everything we do. As we do that, we're building a new BT wide culture that is open, engaged and more focused on delivering for our customers and ultimately our owners. We are streamlining our product portfolio dramatically based on a simpler and more modern IT estate, and we're working to create real competitive advantage from our technology and in particular from AI, which we are increasingly using everywhere, for example, in enabling hyper personalized marketing and fraud protection or for our chatbot AIMY or in improved network planning and coding efficiency. And we can see much more value and customer experience improvement to be unleashed by AI in the years ahead. All this underpins our ability to restore growth, expand margins and drive our cash flow inflection.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And finally, in our strategy, we've now fully embedded what we do for society and the planet with a focus on digital inclusion, resilience and sustainability, ensuring that no one gets left behind, that the country and our customers feel safe and secure when they're connected to us at BT and that as we shift to next generation products, services and networks, we play our part in the road to net zero and positively impacting the country. So let's now look at the levers for growth creation in each division starting on Slide 16. In Openreach, we remain firmly on track towards our 2,030 targets, which have not changed. We're building and connecting faster than anyone else, whilst maintaining a premium quality at a lower cost than our major competitors, which remains at the low end of our GBP $2.50 to GBP $3.50 range per premise pass even if 25% of that build is actually in more rural locations. Our scale efficiencies and engineering prowess have been evident in our build for quite some time, but we've now ramped up our provisioning engine too, connecting at a rate of 55,000 per week and an average cost of around GBP 300 per premises.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

With soon to be nationwide coverage, best in class provisioning, full integration with our CPs and excellent customer service, we are confident we can continue to accelerate connections, which combined with indexation will drive further ARPU growth. In our operations, full fiber fault rate remains more than 60% lower than copper. And as we continue to migrate customers, fault volumes continue to fall, benefiting customers and clearly our OpEx. As a result, we remain absolutely confident of continued solid EBITDAR growth and a fair return for our owners even as we go through a phase with admittedly more limited top line progression. To understand the scale of our network, it is best to look at it on a map.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And here on Slide 17, you can see the success of our build since 2021 as we move the green side of Glasgow to the blue side of Glasgow. This makes it abundantly clear we are the only national network, and the success of the fiber program so far supports further our acceleration by 20% to up to 5,000,000 premises in this coming fiscal year. Let me give you two reasons that we took this decision. Now that we've got the engine humming, it makes sense to use it rather than slow it down too early. And second, the faster the book we build, the better we address demand, defend our base and secure the levers to growth and value creation, not just in Openreach, but also in our retail units.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So although I stood here last year and said that we're past peak CapEx, it actually makes more sense to keep building like Fury and connecting like crazy. With our overall strategy delivering, our finance is now in good shape. We're now well on track to pass the 25,000,000 homes and businesses that we promised by the end of next calendar year. Let's move on to Consumer on Slide 18. In Consumer, our primary focus remains commercialize our great network assets via some of The UK's strongest retail brands to win the household, drive convergence, improve customer experience and grow customer lifetime value.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And we're making good progress. Our five gs base is growing as is our full fiber base, and convergence is finally starting to tick up. Converting all of this to a consistently improving ARPU will also be easier once we've worked through the high price inflation of recent years and build our fiber base even further. On convergence specifically, we've product relationships to build on in half of UK homes. And while we've made good progress in the past year, there's lots more to do to reach our full potential by leveraging some of the products and partnerships and better on BT deliveries and concepts that I mentioned earlier.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

EE now has brand consideration for broadband that is almost up to its mobile level, and we're seeing excellent sales of broadband to our mobile customers and vice versa. EE One is also starting to drive up the number of sims per household, which is particularly beneficial to defending ourselves against no frills value brands. Finally, as I've hinted at in recent months, the BT brand will be reinvigorated. And with Plusnet, we can continue to play at the value end of the market while protecting the premium nature of the BT and EE propositions. And with over 400 retail stores and a UK based call center and UK based call centers in the communities where our customers live and work, supported by a digitally transformed omnichannel experience.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We are confident that this rich set of assets combined with the transformation will return us to grow sustainably from next fiscal year. Moving to business. In The UK, as I said, we're now fully focused on radically simplifying, accelerating our transformation and developing our iconic brand and leading market positions to become the most trusted one stop digital shop for businesses large and small as we help them and protect them in an increasingly digital age. BT has the highest consideration and first choice purchase intent of all telecoms brands, especially in the mass market business space, and that's despite underinvestment in recent years. We intend on a modest up weight to brand investment to increase awareness and consideration, including strengthening our support to SMB and SoHo customers in our retail footprint, which will now remain dual branded.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

In corporate and public sector, we are trusted to support the foundations of our country from the government to banks to air traffic control. We're proud to operate the 9 90 9 service, support the home office to build and operate the emergency services network and help defend companies from the growing risk of cyber attacks. And we'll continue to innovate, for example, expanding Global Fabric into our UK customer base to connect them across technologies to all major cloud locations. Simplification and legacy migration is now happening at pace, as you can see here, and we've already delivered a 20% reduction in the number of products we sell in the past year, and this streamlining will continue. Overall, two thirds of our UK revenue will be driven by just 15% of our current products by the end of the decade.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We do know, however, that we still need to translate all of this into better financial results and better customer experience sooner rather than later. Welcome, John. Hence, why we now have a dedicated UK business leadership team established as of April 1, whose sole focus is to accelerate our transformation, better leverage the brilliant assets we have and to ultimately win in the market. As I announced last year, we are continuing to look at all options to optimize our international business. We've now carved it out with a dedicated leadership also as of April 1, and eight thousand personnel moved into that unit just as of last week.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We're completing Global Fabric to enable legacy migration, and we're pursuing a radical portfolio simplification and cost optimization to ultimately make the segment at least free cash flow neutral and ripe to play a role in the needed consolidation of this segment of the market, which I still believe is one of the scenarios we could pursue. Now it's time to hand back to Simon once again to take us through transformation and our capital allocation priorities, and then I'll be back to talk you through outlook.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Thank you. So moving, as Alison said, on to our transformation objectives. Our transformation of BT Group involves building and migrating customers to differentiated and converged products on new full fiber and five gs networks, all delivered on low touch journeys on modern modular IT leveraging our growing AI capabilities. And this allows us to progressively close legacy networks and IT liberating further cost savings. Now this is a demanding multi year program.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

It's one that we are confident is going to demonstrably improve customer experience and materially lower headcount and costs. So during FY '20 '20 '5, we closed 300 IT applications. We improved our NPS, now marking the second year of annual NPS improvement. We reduced total headcount by 4,000, although that was a 6,400 reduction in employees, partially offset by a 2,400 increase in lower unit cost, more flexible subcontractors on our CapEx programs. We delivered £913,000,000 of gross annualized cost savings, that's almost 30% of our £3,000,000,000 savings program.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

The £913,000,000 cost savings reflected both headcount reductions and third party cost savings, including a four percent reduction in energy consumption and significant procurement savings. For example, in engineering materials and in subcontractor rates. These savings benefited FY 2025 and will of course help drive EBITDA growth in FY 2026. The £400,000,000 cost to achieve the FY 2025 savings was in line with our expectation of around 40% of the total cost to achieve of £1,000,000,000 We continue to expect the remaining costs to be phased reasonably evenly over the remaining four years of the plan to FY 2029. We're firmly on track to hit all our FY twenty twenty eight to thirty objectives, that's 500 applications, improved NPS, total headcount of 75,000 to 90,000 and the full GBP 3,000,000,000 gross annualized cost savings target.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

I'll now turn to how we will deploy the expanding cash flow. So our capital allocation policy, it's clear, it's consistent. First, we'll continue to invest for growth in our full fiber five gs and core networks and in transforming our IT. We remain confident that this investment will deliver long term returns for our shareholders. On our full fiber investment, we were pleased to see that Ofcom reaffirmed the principle of the fair bet in the telecoms access review consultation published in March.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Our annual CapEx will progressively reduce by more than £1,000,000,000 from the FY 2026 level once we built full fiber to 25,000,000 premises in December 26 and as we complete the five gs rollout and our IT transformation. We'll sell assets where they're not core. Indeed we've sold businesses in Ireland and Italy in the past year. We'll also monetize stranded or legacy assets. For example, we've generated nearly 500,000,000 from selling our former HQ buildings and the BT Tower and this has funded our Better Workplace program, which has reduced our UK office locations from 300 in 2019 to under 30 today.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

And we'll continue to sell forward and extract legacy copper. Second, we will support our commitments to the pension fund. We agreed the 2023 Trianu valuation and we reconfirmed our funding plan in twenty twenty three November. We remain on track to be fully funded by 02/1930. And as part of the funding plan, we have started to contribute via our co investment vehicle, which will refund to BT any funds not required for the BTPS from 02/1932.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Third, we will maintain our strong balance sheet. We're committed to a BBB floor and a BBB plus through cycle credit rating target. We think that this delivers the optimal cost of capital and assured access to competitive funding. We expect to progressively reduce our leverage once we've completed the $25,000,000 Full Fiber build in December 26. And then finally, our residual cash flow is then available to fund progressive dividends to our shareholders with the aim clearly to see the group's resilient long term cash generation reflected in capital appreciation in our shares.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

So we've got a clear set of performance objectives. We've got a disciplined capital allocation framework that will drive returns on capital for our shareholders. And on that note, let me hand back to Alison to conclude.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Thank you, Simon. So let me draw it all together and then get into the outlook. As I said, twelve months ago, I said to all of you that I believed our sharpened focus, improved operational discipline and an acceleration in the pace of our modernization would enable us to deliver an even brighter future for BT Group faster, and I stand by that belief. Let's look at the outlook. Starting with fiscal year twenty twenty six, we expect total revenue of around GBP 20,000,000,000.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We're now also guiding on UK service revenue. This is to reflect both our sharper UK focus and to provide a target based important metric in a largely subscription based business. We expect fiscal year twenty twenty six UK service revenue to be between £15,300,000,000 and £15,600,000,000 which is basically flat to down on fiscal year twenty twenty five, reflecting a £200,000,000 drag from traditional voice, which will continue until the closure of the PSTN in January 2027. Excluding this, we should have relatively stable revenues building on a now more stable customer base in Consumer. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to increase to between GBP 8,200,000,000.0 and GBP 8,300,000,000.0, with growth weighted to the second half successfully absorbing the impact of higher National Insurance and National Living wage costs, which started already in April and cost us around GBP 100,000,000 a year.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Turning to CapEx. Our accelerated build and our accelerated provisioning means we expect this to be around £5,000,000,000 in fiscal year twenty twenty six. And normalized free cash flow for fiscal year twenty twenty six of around 1,500,000,000 reflects the higher CapEx, partly offset by the growing EBITDA and a further £100,000,000 of forward copper sales, as Simon mentioned. From fiscal year twenty twenty seven, we expect revenue to show improvement as legacy declines abate and EBITDA will continue to grow ahead of revenue benefiting from the ongoing transformation programs that Simon just took you through. And once we've reached £25,000,000 premises with full fiber by December next year, we'll then reduce CapEx by more than £1,000,000,000 a year from the fiscal year twenty twenty six level.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

All of this results in us maintaining our normalized free cash flow targets of £2,000,000,000 in fiscal year twenty twenty seven and £3,000,000,000 in fiscal year thirty, which we will achieve while continuing to invest consistently in the future of the business. So to close, we've delivered strong results despite revenue headwinds with good momentum as we move into the new financial year. We're accelerating the pace of simplification and transformation, improving customer satisfaction across the board, across all of our brands and business segments. And our proven efficiency and engineering leadership is enabling us to go faster on fiber investment as we create one of Europe's best at scale fiber platforms. And we're now only one year away from our significant cash flow inflection.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

As

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

you

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

can tell, I remain absolutely confident that as we build and connect at pace, our transformation will accelerate and we will deliver a better BT for all of us, our customers, our colleagues, the country and our owners. So thanks for listening. We will now move to Q and A. And given the time available and the number of people in the room, some already very keen, we'll keep it to one question per person. First question, please.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And we're going to go left to right. So I'll start with you, Karen, since you've had your hand up first and you've got the brightest jacket on, and then we'll move around, okay? Thank you very much.

[Karen Egan, Head - Telecoms at Enders Analysis]

Good morning. Karen Egan from Endis Analysis. Regarding your outlook, can you say what you have assumed regarding alt net funding in that outlook? And an extension of that question, if I might. With BT Consumer Broadband lines growing whilst Openreach is still losing lines, it's obviously an issue with your CPs.

[Karen Egan, Head - Telecoms at Enders Analysis]

Can you talk about the role of talk talk customer losses within that?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So basically, our outlook for line losses assumes no change in the market dynamics than we've seen in the last fiscal year. And that's why we are saying that our line losses will be at the same rate as we've seen in the second half. So we're assuming alt net funding will continue. Clearly, if it doesn't, that will change matters. And we are also assuming that our CPs will continue to compete at the same rate that they have been this past year.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Clearly, our BT retail CPs are performing very well in the Openreach platform. There is one challenged CP that has not been investing to maintain their base, and that has been a headwind to us. They don't buy all of their broadband services from us, but we are one of their biggest suppliers. And if you isolate that challenged CP, underlying, we've had very, very good momentum actually overall. And the shift to altnets are pretty much in line with what we always predicted.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So our assumption is the alt nets will continue to be funded and the CPEs will continue to perform as they have done recently. We've recognized that one we've also built in that one CP will be bringing on a second supplier during the year as well. And then we're also assuming that there's not going to be any dramatic change to the market. Now we do believe, based on the demand that we are seeing for fiber, that the fixed broadband market will grow again. We're also confident that the government will get house building going, and that will stimulate market growth, too.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

But for now, we're assuming none of those tailwinds in our base assumption. Assumption. And I don't know, Simon, anything?

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

No, it's good.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Thank you, Karen. We'll go to the table in the far left and then we'll come back to you. Yes. Yes, go ahead.

[Andrew Beale, Senior Analyst at Arete Research]

We're Sorry. Andrew Beale from Aratea Research. I just wondered if you could dig into consumer a bit and what's changed recently in your approach to market in a little bit more detail. And are you getting the same sort of intake ARPU and incurring the same sort of acquisition costs as you're doing that? And do you have momentum in that growth?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Yes. Great question. The big difference is we've now activated all three of our brands. As we became very focused on the launch of new EE and driving that uniquely, we did underweight investment into the BT and Plusnet brands. And since February, Claire has the same belief in me.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We're going to have a multi brand strategy, and we're activating all three brands, and that is proving to be very successful. In terms of ARPUs, we're not seeing any major impact on our overall ARPU projections. We were very underweight in the value segment for broadband even although we have the brand with one of the highest NPS in Plusnet. And particularly since you're seeing other value brands not investing in the market, we've seen that as an opportunity. But as I said earlier, by activating Plusnet, we protect BT and EE's ARPUs because we really target that brand against the value segment.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We're also getting much smarter at having gone through a phase of really having a mass nationwide approach as we reestablished EE as the leading converged brand, we've recognized that our competition is not always national, particularly with some of the alt nets. So we're making having a much more targeted regional approach to how we defend and win in the market as well, and that has been activated in the last few months too. So really leveraging all our brands, leveraging our reach deeply in different regions and really looking at where we now have fiber from the Openreach platform, how do we use that as an opportunity to defend and grow our business in those areas where we weren't always giving our best customers the best. So okay. Malcolm?

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

Hi, it's Steve.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Steve. I'm calling you by your surname.

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

Steve. Steve. It's fine, Kirby.

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

Thank

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

you very much, By

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

the way, it's Kirkby.

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

Kirkby, sorry, Kirkby. Kirkby, apologies. Steve Malcolm, Redburn Atlantic. Yes, a couple of questions on Openreach, which you I'm sure will take directly. Jed, could you give us an idea of what you think the overbuild of your 18,000,000 fiber lines is with Virgin and the alt nets at the moment?

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

And as you move forward, how you think that overbuild develops for the next 5,000,000? Then a quick follow-up. If you're doing an extra 5,000,000 lines this year, should we not think you've got fewer fiber lines to build in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven and therefore there's a sharper CapEx drop off and therefore upside to the $2,000,000,000 of free cash flow? Thanks.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Yes. Great questions. I guess because you've seen the slowing of the NextFibre footprint, I think they only built, what, 165,000 homes passed in the last quarter. Clive built 1,100,000 more, so 10 times. We've not really seen a dramatic change in the overall Virgin Media footprint overlap versus when we started out because they've been upgrading their existing network and now with a slowing in next fiber, actually, we are able to compete better in the emerging media footprint than we ever did before because we are now building fiber in areas that we didn't have fiber up against their coax broadband.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So I think that's how I would answer that. And if you remember, that was one of the reasons that we really activated EE as our lead convergence brand because EE had better brand consideration with the cohorts that live in those towns and cities that were previously being served by Virgin Media. In terms of your question on the CapEx, we are basically assuming that always provisioning lags build. And so the reason you're not seeing additional drop off is because our take up is going up all the time. We're retaining the capacity to keep provisioning at the highest level in the market, and that's why you don't see a drop off immediately in fiscal year twenty seven.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Does that answer your question? Yes, it will. There will yes, there will be overbuild of altnets because we are now yes, yes. We won't go into all the areas that altnets are in, but we will be overbuilding in areas where altnets already are because we are seeing too much churn and we see demand for our fiber. So there will be overbuild there.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Can I if I might add, was going to add, today the 18,000,000 is somewhat over indexed towards the alt net footprint? It's also somewhat over indexed relatively to the Virgin footprint. And where we've got FTTP, generally, we perform very strongly. Clearly, by accelerating the build, we're able to cover an even broader platform of alt net footprint, which is slowing down in terms of build with FTTP, which over time is clearly going to significantly strengthen our position and what we can deliver to the CPs. And if I may just, Steve, one other final point on the I mean, step back.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

We guided a year ago to $1,500,000,000 or so for 26,000,000,000 and $2,000,000,000 We're keeping $3,500,000,000 on the nose, but we're going to exit from FY 2027 with an accelerated build of FTTP network, more provisioning on that network and in a stronger position as we go forward.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Let's go back to this, Tim.

[James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research]

Yes. Hi, it's James Ratzer from New Street Research. So I think kind of questions on Openreach line losses might be a theme of the morning. So one thing I just wanted to follow-up on please was in your answer to Karen's question you essentially said you assume things next year are staying broadly similar to H2 this year. But the one change you did allude to indirectly was Sky now potentially selling through Citi fiber.

[James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research]

Does that mean in your assumptions you're assuming the impact from that this year will actually be pretty modest from what you're picking up at the moment? And do you see anything in your medium term plan that makes you think you have to launch an Equinox three pricing plan to retain volumes on your network?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So as you know, Sky are only trialing on the CityFibre network now, and so they will only start ramping up on City Fiber starting in our Q2, so they're Q3. So yes, we do have an impact assumed in there. But because we're seeing growth in other CPs, BT Retail being one, another one that's growing very nicely in the market as well, we see that we'll be able to offset some of that. And also, as we now go into new areas where fiber hasn't been before, we'll start to win back customers as well.

[James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research]

And anything on Equinox three?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

On Equinox three, as you know, whilst we are working through the TAR, we always assume there would be no Equinox three or any equivalent of Equinox three before March 26. But we are always looking at how we can commercially compete in the market using the levers we can.

[Matthew Howett, Founder & CEO at Assembly Research]

Thanks. Matt Howitt from Assembly Research. Maybe sticking with the TAR, I think Simon acknowledged that Ofcom's commitment to the fair bet was in there. And clearly, think that's pretty helped with the growth in the full footprint that Openreach is targeting. There wasn't really anything in there on copper retirement.

[Matthew Howett, Founder & CEO at Assembly Research]

Do you think something more around that would be helpful, particularly with retiring that sooner and getting customers off of legacy?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Yes, absolutely. And we're in dialogue with Ofcom and DSET on that. Certainly, it is the government's desire to shift the population to modern day technologies. And so we're discussing that with them and whether it ends up in the tar or via some other mechanism, it's very clear the benefits to the country of us getting off copper faster. And they are saying all the right things.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

It's not yet in the tarp, but we hope something will come. Thank you.

[Matthew Howett, Founder & CEO at Assembly Research]

Thanks.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Polo?

[Polo Tang, Managing Director at UBS Group]

Hi. It's Polo Tang from UBS. Just a quick question in terms of Openreach because the network is currently GPON enabled, giving you two to three gigabit speeds. But a lot of their altnets have XGS PON, giving them speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. So how much would it cost per home to upgrade the Openreach network to XGS PON?

[Polo Tang, Managing Director at UBS Group]

And could you give us an update in terms of the current cost to provision for Openreach?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

The current cost to provision for Openreach is £300 per premise. On XGS PON, we haven't declared what the extra cost of that would be, but we will be trialing XGS PON, and we will, of course, have that in our footprint at some point as well to be able to compete.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Alison, can I just qualify because it may be one for all of you? I think what we've said before, Polo, is that the total cost is absolutely GBP 300,000,000. Do bear in mind that not all of that is capitalized. Something like 75%, eighty % or so is capitalized. Just to be clear, that's the total cash cost, sorry.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We'll take one from that table and then we'll do a next we'll do one online. Yes, Helane,

[David Wright, Managing Director at Bank of America]

David Wright from Bank of America. I just guess on consumer, you sort of, I wouldn't say reactivated BT brand, but it's kind of come back into the fold a little after maybe a bit of overemphasizing EE. But one of the drivers for that was always that there was the sort of the IT, the technical stack behind EE that was maybe a little bit more efficient, had a lot less legacy in it. So I'm just wondering, is there have whilst you've got more brands back on the table, have you slightly stepped back in terms of the efficiency of the rollout? And the only reason I say that, I thought consumer EBITDA was a little light, and I know there were one or two exceptional support items in there.

[David Wright, Managing Director at Bank of America]

So has cost a little bit more to get that broadband positive consumer growth? And by the way, is that now a commitment? Are you looking to grow consumer broadband ads consistently from here?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

I can't promise consistently every quarter, but we absolutely want to, first of all, stabilize our base and then start to grow our market share again, leveraging all three brands. The Q4 EBITDA was not affected by some of the things you mentioned there. And maybe you can pick up on what it was, Simon. The tech that we're building, we were always going to migrate all of our customers to the new tech anyway, and we've built tech that will be able to cope with multiple brands. And so now we just need to ensure that we've got that multi brand environment sooner rather than later, but that was always the intention as we've been gradually migrating the customers.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And it's only the broadband tech that we've modernized so far. We still have to do an upgrade of the mobile tech. And that is not the driver consumer EBITDA being we have in the year, because of the scale of migrations, particularly PSTN and broadband migrations, we've heavily invested in fiber take up. That has had an impact, but is getting the market position in the right place. And so we're slightly heightened in our call centers at the moment as well because of the scale of those migrations.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Simon, anything else?

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

No. I mean I think the consumer EBITDA performed strongly through the year. It benefited a little bit in Q4 with some one offs. That's those occur from time to time. But actually, the progress of cost transformation has been strong.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Do remember the business had to absorb the movement in the National Living Wage as well in here. So I think it's

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

one that was

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

done last year as

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

well.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Yes. So I think the team have done a very good job in both getting us back to growth in the broadband base. You saw we also, Scott, ended the year with the mobile base at about the same level, doing that with the investment it entails, but really tackling the cost base to sustain the EBITDA.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Let's take an online question now, and then we'll go back to Andrew and then go to this table. What's the online question?

[Operator]

Thank you very

[Operator]

much.

[Operator]

Our first online question comes from Akhil Dutani from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Akhil.

[Akhil Dattani, Managing Director at JP Morgan]

Thanks for taking the question. I've got a question around the cash flow profile and capital allocation. It's a bit of a bigger picture question. Alison, you mentioned, obviously, the intense CapEx weight on cash flow over recent years.

[Akhil Dattani, Managing Director at JP Morgan]

But clearly, we're now twelve months away from that cash flow inflection we've been effectively waiting for. So we get to $2,000,000,000 next year. And then obviously, the aspiration to get to $3,000,000,000 midterm. If we look at recent years, the cash flow effectively has been absorbed by the spec items and the dividend. So obviously, there hasn't been a lot of headroom.

[Akhil Dattani, Managing Director at JP Morgan]

That headroom meaningfully improves from next year onwards. And I guess I'd love to get some very early thoughts. Appreciate, obviously, there's a bit of a way out. Just how you're thinking around what that would ultimately mean in terms of your capital allocation. I guess in terms of answering it, one is obviously high level.

[Akhil Dattani, Managing Director at JP Morgan]

What are the things you might be thinking about as you're planning midterm? But secondly, do you think this is something that could be relevant already next year? Or do you think you'd want a couple of years of better cash flow under the belt before making a call? Thanks a lot.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Akhil, I'll get Simon to answer that since he took you through quite a detailed capital allocation slide.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Yes. So Akhil, listen, thanks very much for the question. I mean we've reaffirmed our guidance of delivering normalized cash flow up to 2,000,000,000 and then in FY 2027 and then $3,000,000,000 by the end of the decade, and we're confident in delivery of that. And it's powered really by this very significant reduction in the capital investment as well as continued EBITDA growth as we sustain revenue growth from 27% and expand margin. So we're confident in delivering the normalized cash flow.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

And then in addition to that, as we've been pretty clear, the specific items, so that particularly the restructuring costs will significantly abate as we travel out over that time period. So we will be seeing expansion of the cash flow at the residual level as well. I set out pretty clearly, think, in my remarks earlier that as we expand the cash clearly the balance sheet and retaining a strong balance sheet is important for us, gives us some capacity to delever and to try and move to our target credit rating of BBB plus, but we can secure that while still having capacity for enhanced returns to shareholders, which is of course the route through which we'll generate and deliver the return on the significant investment we're making. And that's the policy and we'll be following that over the rest of the this decade. In terms of the short term impacts, real focus is going to be on getting that significant inflection and capital reduction in FY 2027 at 2,000,000,000.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

So I think you can see us be very focused and consistent on delivering that first. Alison?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

But also, I hope you can see and build confidence from the fact that as our cash flow has already been inflecting, we have been growing our dividend into that increased cash flow, and you should expect that to continue. Okay. I think Andrew next, and then we'll zigzag to Maurice's table.

[Andrew Lee, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Yes. Thanks, Alison. It's Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. As you highlighted in your presentation, kind of efficient monetization of your network investments is at the heart of your strategy and kind of a central feature in that is Openreach EBITDA margin expansion. That's been strong in FY 2025, but not particularly strong in the fourth quarter.

[Andrew Lee, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Which is a better guide for FY 2026 and beyond, the FY 2025 margin expansion or the fourth quarter fairly uninspiring expansion?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Yes. Well, fourth quarter was fairly was affected by storm related rebates and some one offs. So that is not a good reflection of going forward, but it won't be at the same level as the full year fiscal year 2025 because we had higher indexation in fiscal year twenty twenty five than we have in fiscal year twenty twenty six. And clearly, we're starting the year with lower lines than we started last year with. So it won't be of Q2 it won't be of the Q4 level, will it?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Or am I I'm not supposed to be guiding at that level, am I,

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

you're No. But I no, no. I no, but I thought it was a very helpful comment for Mr. Selle to hear.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Right. Okay.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

The Q4 margins were indeed somewhat depressed and not what we would expect going forward. But I think the basic dynamics from an Openreach perspective is by really investing and driving the FTT build and provisioning, we can start really defend the broadband line base. We're going through a challenge period where we expect to strengthen that competitive position. We do get indexation. But do remember, every time we move customers on to FTTP, we are lowering the cost of servicing those customers and repairing the network.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

And in doing that, that has a snowballing effect as you get more and more on to FTTP. So we do expect to see some continued EBITDA margin expansion over the rest of the decade as we continue to build.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And you only need to look at the reduction in the workforce, the direct workforce in Openreach, you see the scope for that margin expansion going forward.

[Andrew Lee, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

I was just going say, just to follow-up exactly on that. So those extra kind of tailwinds, what exactly is going into that kind of tailwind? So you'll see lower full rates, like how are those kind of tailwinds outside of indexation trending? Are they

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

lower full rates, lower direct labor. So more subcontractors we can switch off and on. Let because of now the visibility that we're giving the subcontractor population even further now, leveraging great procurement and sourcing costs on that. They're doing a lot of work on product desk space productivity to reduce headcount and also automation. Think those Clive knows he has to expand his EBITDA faster than his revenue, and he's working on it.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

And I'd add, I mean, we mentioned energy costs as well, which is quite consumptive in Openreach. I mean we focused here too at the end of the decade. Do remember as we approach that, we're starting to tackle the next significant opportunity for lowering our cost base, which is we've got a large section of our exchange network. It was an earlier question and is actually this topic, which is also going to be a reduction in our cost base as we exit from those 4,500 or so exchanges. That's still to come, not in the numbers we've described.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Start to the left and go around the three on this table. Robert first, then

[Robert Grindle, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

you. Robert from Deutsche Bank. Alison, you mentioned best network. Do you feel, particularly on the mobile side, you may need to have to respond to the merger of Vodafone and three and VMO2 also get some extra spectrum? And as part of all that, have you yet seen increased wholesale mobile competition because of the JV?

[Robert Grindle, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

And if you have to upgrade your network, are you expecting your towers leases to increase? Is this a CapEx source of extra CapEx? Thanks.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

We are so far ahead on the others on mobile performance. Clearly, their investment is to catch up first. So no matter what test you look at, Ofcom are even getting quite pointy on how they're measuring network performance as well, EE always outperforms the others. That's not to say that we competition is good, and we'll need to look continue to look at improving our network, but we're far ahead today. And the reach of our the emergency services network contract also gives us a unique position in rural locations and gives us a higher level of resilience in general as well that we continue to sustain.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

But of course, we'll always be looking at how do we maintain that best, most trusted, and also most resilient is what we're really seriously looking at. Wholesale competition, having, you know, there's always these new MVNOs come out and they pitch to all of us and some pick them up more than others, but haven't really seen any change in the market. And I think credit to how well we are performing that our mobile churn is at 1% per month. We're holding ARPUs pretty stable and really leveraging convergence and the MultiSIM environment. And then on the towers, anything you want to say on that?

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

No. I mean, think the only point I would make is we clearly anticipate maintaining a really strongly differentiated proposition for our customers. Exactly what that means in terms of network performance will evolve. But we build into our CapEx plan, into the guidance we provided, actually a bit of a little bit of a nudge up in our mobile investment, and we sustain that at a pretty high level through the decade. So we're going to maintain the firepower in our CapEx plan in order to compete and stay at the lead.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Morris?

[Maurice Patrick, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Yes. Hi, there. It's Morris from Barclays. I mean just on Global Services, I mean there was an expectation set by yourself, maybe you'll come back to the market today, if not before, and talk about possibly a sale or some transaction there and you left it inside the guidance and inside the business. Curious as to what changed.

[Maurice Patrick, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Is it still the idea to monetize or sell? And what changed and not before the results?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Yes. I still fundamentally believe, and based on the number of conversations I've had with other players that serve that same multinational segment outside of the domestic markets, there is consolidation opportunity. It was very it became difficult to explain what is the business that you would be combining until we were actually able to carve out. And so the carve out is now and we will be reporting going forward much more transparently what is the revenue, EBITDA of that business going forward, and that will make it much easier to continue what has been some good conversations. And but we also would like to see a little bit more runway on what is Global Fabric actually doing for our business to help migrations.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And we do believe that, that will be something that others will become increasingly more interested in as they also look at how they migrate their customers off of MPLS and other legacy technologies. So we are still keep very open minded about the different scenarios, but we had to carve it out first. Carl?

[Carl Murdock-Smith, Head of European Telecoms Equity Research at Citigroup]

Thank you. Carl Murdoch Smith from Citi. A question on your guidance. One of the more contentious parts of normalized free cash flow is obviously the forward sale of copper, and it's come up in terms of the guidance for 2026. Thinking in terms of the guidance for 2027 and for '30, are you happy to commit that those numbers are kind of underlying and don't include forward copper sales and that anything would be additive on top of that?

[Carl Murdock-Smith, Head of European Telecoms Equity Research at Citigroup]

Or are you retaining that within that potential normalized free cash flow definition on the medium term guide?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

I think this time last year, we said that none of our forward looking guidance assumed any copper sale. And if we did identify new copper sale, we'd be very proactive on that. That's still the case today.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

Yes. I mean, I think two points, Karl. I mean, firstly, we're accelerating our FTTP build, which actually allows us to accelerate some recovery. And therefore, we're bringing forward sales by forward selling of copper sales, and that's we've guided to that for FY 2026. We should be a little bit clear on the semantics here.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

We are selling copper every year of our plan. We do that. The question is do we forward sell it? And the answer is we're not planning any forward sales. But in terms of managing timings of cash flow within and without years, we may.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

But it doesn't change the overall cash that's coming from copper over this period. Yes.

[Carl Murdock-Smith, Head of European Telecoms Equity Research at Citigroup]

That's great. Thank you.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Thank you. You might need to stand up, Karl, sorry.

[Camille Mendler, Director - Research at Omdia]

Camille Mendler with Omnia. As you shift more to domestic business, can you comment a little bit more about your growth and profitability dependency on SMBs and specifically the buying and cross selling through digital channels versus direct or indirect? What are your targets around digital selling? Where are you at now?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So we see lots of opportunity for the SMB space. We don't believe whilst we have around 30% market share in that segment, it's very much just on the core connectivity product services products and services, and we have not been bundling that with some of the other cloud based or security solutions that this segment clearly needs. Our digital servicing of that channel is very low today. I'm looking at John, it's kind of, at best, around 9%, ten %. The scope is significantly more than that, and that is a key part of the transformation strategy that John is now leading.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And he's seen numbers of a dramatically higher number where you sell through digitally coming from a country like Denmark and spending so much time in countries like Sweden as well, where you're seeing 30%, forty % digital channel share. So lots of opportunity. And also it's also a segment that is served by a very fragmented range of suppliers today, and that's where we see opportunity for consolidation, the strength of the BT brand selling more directly and why John and Claire have been working, in particular also, how do we really use our store footprint to strengthen our presence on the high street for that important segment, too. Yes. Thank you.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Any questions online? My goodness. No, more questions? Oh.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

We've a second one.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Well, we've got time, James, so why not? As long as it's not a difficult one.

[James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research]

No, so I had a question. There was a press report, was it earlier this week, last week about your potential interest in selling TNT Sports. So I was wondering if we could just explore that a little bit further because obviously you're locked up on your shares until I think August year unless Warner Brothers exercise their call option to buy you out. So given that press story, is that something they are interested in doing right now? Or do we wait till a year's time?

[James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research]

And I think in the accounts you've just reported, you've slightly marked down the book value, but it's still in at around GBP $630,000,000 for all the different components I think you own there, the preference A shares, the C shares, the equity stake. So if there's a sale, is that the price we should have in mind?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

So clearly, we've taken a write down because generally, the sports market the subscription market for sports rights has been pretty challenged. And looking at the forward looking projections, we had to take another look at what was the carrying value of that asset. Hence, that was very clever of you to spot in Page 25 or whatever it is that we took a bit of a write down on that, and we've been doing that regularly along the way. Listen, when we went into that JV with Warner Bros. Discovery, it was very clear a route to exit for us.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

There were two call option windows, one expired last year, one comes in later twenty twenty six. We have a very good dialogue with them, and let's see what happens between now and then. But rest assured, the carrying value reflects a fair valuation of that business and the different moving parts that would be triggered should we strike an earlier deal or a deal at that time. I don't know whether you want to say anything about what's in the balance sheet now or no?

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

It's a gripping topic.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

It is a gripping topic, yes.

[Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director at BT Group]

The only thing, James, you're missing is that in addition to the assets, as you know, we also have a capitalized liability for the off market minimum guarantee component. And that, to some extent, is recycled through one of the assets. So the net position is somewhat lower. But we disclosed the MG liability at March '2 point '8 '8 percent, I think, so you net that off. Yes.

[James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research]

All right.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Steve?

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

Just on M and A and capital allocation. We've talked about disposals, but and you've talked about things like TalkTalk. We've seen a bit of M and A activity within The UK recently. We've seen Daisy kind of finally partner up with Virgin or do a deal there.

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

I mean in your strategic thinking, lots of your competitors and your customers are in quite deep financial trouble at the moment. I mean do you think about yourself as a possible consolidator? Is that in any part considered in your strategic planning? Do you think Ofcom would give support? Or is that completely ruled out?

[Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic]

It's about generating cash, paying down debts. Should we expect any kind of M and A in the next couple of years? Thanks.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Absolutely. We would participate in consolidation where we believe we would get approval and where it makes economic sense. And clearly, there are some segments of the market that would be trickier than others, but there's other segments where it's very clear that we don't have S and P and that therefore we could participate. So we it is part of our strategy to always be looking at the market because we do believe we're entering into a phase of consolidation. And in the dialogue I have with Ofcom, I'm very clear I want to be able to participate where I can.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Polo and then Morris.

[Polo Tang, Managing Director at UBS Group]

Just a quick question in terms of UK service revenues,

[Polo Tang, Managing Director at UBS Group]

because if you look at

[Polo Tang, Managing Director at UBS Group]

your guidance for the coming year, the guidance range is flat to down hundred million Correct. In terms of the range. But could you maybe give some color in terms of how we should think about the impact of service revenues by unit? And then just trying to get a sense of trajectory.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Yes. Well, we don't give guidance by unit. But as I said, with the consumer base now stabilized, we will see a very similar trajectory during the year in consumer as we saw this year, which was negative in the first half as we go through back book to front book corrections and then return to growth in the second half. Business is still going through a transition. Both units have a couple of hundred million across them as a headwind from PSTN.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

But certainly, it will be more consumer will probably be ahead of some of the other units. Morris, and then we go online.

[Maurice Patrick, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Yes. It's Morris again. Just a question on One Touch switching, if I may. So Virgin VMO2 suggested that in the last quarter that One Touch switching was something of

[Maurice Patrick, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

a headwind from

[Maurice Patrick, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

them. Vodafone on their results could have called out for two quarters as being a material tailwind. I suspect from your side, it could probably be a tailwind to win from Virgin, but maybe a headwind for Multnets. Just curious as to whether it's a headwind or tailwind for you and how much?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Well, it's neither a headwind or a tailwind. It's pretty neutral for us at the moment. Like Virgin, we carry a very large existing base, and therefore, they are ripe for the challenger broadband that Vodafone are behaving like at the moment. So I'd say it's kind of neutral for us so And we're definitely picking up in some areas where competitors have not been looking after their customer base well enough. We'll take an online question now.

[Operator]

Thank

[Operator]

you. Our next question comes from Joshua Mills from BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Joshua Mills, Executive Director - Sector Head & Telecoms Research at BNP Paribas]

Hi, there.

[Joshua Mills, Executive Director - Sector Head & Telecoms Research at BNP Paribas]

Hopefully, you can hear me. Yes, Joshua. I'm switching, so I'll be a little bit more straightforward. My question was just on the ARPU drop through and how you're seeing the recent backlog price increases from April be received by the customer base. And perhaps if you could be a bit more specific, the improving NPS that you're seeing across different brands, are you now assuming that you'll see a better drop through of those price rises into ARPU in your FY twenty twenty six guidance for Consumer?

[Joshua Mills, Executive Director - Sector Head & Telecoms Research at BNP Paribas]

Thank you.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

The ARPU drop through so first of all, the price communication has gone down a lot easier this year than it has in previous years. I think the pounds and pence is making it easier for customers to digest. And are other product services, whether it be energy, that is more under attack from some of the consumer bodies that are looking at pricing. So it's been a quieter price increase period. The drop the ARPU drop through is very we're assuming a very similar impact that we saw last year.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

You have the sawtooth effect of customers coming out of two to three years of very heightened inflation. And the cost of regrading them is not dramatically different this year versus last year so far. I think as we go into next fiscal year, you'll start to see that regrade be smaller because a lot of the customers that really want to move after the heightened inflation have already dropped down to lower contracts or already on the pounds and pence. All of that is factored into our outlook for Consumer, still expecting service revenue growth in the second half of this year, but negative in the first half like we saw in fiscal year twenty twenty five. And I think we'll take Polo.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

Oh, no, Karen's got her hand. Yes.

[Karen Egan, Head - Telecoms at Enders Analysis]

Thank you. So you've reinvigorated the Plusnet brand on the broadband side. Might you do the same thing on the mobile side?

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

No plans to do that at this time. We're fully out of Plusnet on mobile. And so far, since using household penetration, EE1 driving household tariffs. As I said, we're defending ourselves very well in that value segment. But it's something we're monitoring, but no plan to do that at this time.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And I think Nick is now giving me the sign that we should end what has been a long ninety minutes. But thank you all for joining today. Really appreciate it. I hope you got all the information you needed to get as confident and as excited as we are about the journey ahead and particularly that exciting cash flow inflection that's now just a year away. Clive is going to have much more fiber in your area soon if you need an upgrade.

[Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director at BT Group]

And thank you all. Please say hello to some of the new team members and the long standing team members and see you again very soon. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive & Director
• Simon Lowth, CFO & Executive Director

Analysts

• Karen Egan, Head - Telecoms at Enders Analysis
• Andrew Beale, Senior Analyst at Arete Research
• Steve Malcolm, Partner at Redburn Atlantic
• James Ratzer, Partner at New Street Research
• Matthew Howett, Founder & CEO at Assembly Research
• Polo Tang, Managing Director at UBS Group
• David Wright, Managing Director at Bank of America
• Akhil Dattani, Managing Director at JP Morgan
• Andrew Lee, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
• Robert Grindle, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Maurice Patrick, Analyst at Barclays Capital
• Carl Murdock-Smith, Head of European Telecoms Equity Research at Citigroup
• Camille Mendler, Director - Research at Omdia
• Joshua Mills, Executive Director - Sector Head & Telecoms Research at BNP Paribas