Telecom company BT Group plc (BT_A.L,BT) reported Thursday that its profit before tax for the nine months to 31 December 2020 declined 17 percent to 1.59 billion pounds from last year's 1.91 billion pounds, reflecting a decline in adjusted EBITDA.
Profit after tax was 1.28 billion pounds, down 16 percent from 1.53 billion pounds a year ago.
Adjusted EBITDA was 5.60 billion pounds, down 5 percent from last year, mainly driven by a fall in revenue. This was partially offset by H1 sports rights rebates, savings from the company's modernization program and other cost initiatives including Covid-19 mitigating actions.
Revenue for the period declined 7 percent to 16.06 billion pounds from 17.25 billion pounds last year, primarily due to o the impact of Covid-19 on Consumer and the company's enterprise units, ongoing legacy product declines and divestments of domestic businesses in Spain, Latin America and France.
This was partially offset by higher rental bases of fibre-enabled products and Ethernet in Openreach. Adjusted revenue of 16.08 billion pounds was down 6 percent from last year.
Looking ahead, the company said it is maintaining its outlook for fiscal year 2020/2021 revenue, EBITDA and capex. The EBITDA outlook range remains at 7.3 billion pounds to 7.5 billion pounds.
As a result of a cash receipt from the monetization of a non-strategic revenue stream generated from BT Group's building infrastructure in Enterprise that more than offset the negative cash impact of Brexit planning and the Huawei pre-buy, the company narrowed its FY20/21 normalized free cash flow guidance range to 1.3 billion to 1.5 billion pounds from 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion pounds.
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