BT.A Bt Group Plc

By Joe Hoppe

BT Group PLC said Thursday that pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2022 fell slightly together with revenue, but maintained its outlook and brought forward its cost-savings target.

The U.K. telecommunications company said that for the six months ended Sept. 30, pretax profit slipped to 1.01 billion pounds ($1.38 billion) from GBP1.06 billion, on the back of higher finance expenses.

Revenue fell 3% to GBP10.31 billion, largely due to revenue decline in its enterprise and global divisions though partially offset by growth in Openreach.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization--the company's preferred profit metric, which strips out exceptional and other one-off items--were GBP3.75 billion, up from GBP3.72 billion for the same period a year earlier.

The company brought forward its fiscal 2025 savings target of GBP2 billion in gross annualized savings to fiscal 2024 with further savings planned in fiscal 2025, within the expected cost of GBP1.3 billion. Peak capital expenditure from fiscal 2023 is expected at GBP4.8 billion, from GBP5 billion.

The board declared an interim dividend of 2.31 pence a share.

BT said that it was in-line with its fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023 expectations.

Write to Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 04, 2021 03:35 ET (07:35 GMT)

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