BT Top 9.27 Mill UK Broadband Users as Openreach Connect 7.17 Mill to Fibre

BT has today published their latest quarterly results (Q4 2016 calendar), which saw their retail broadband base grow by +83k to total 9,276,000 subscribers (up from +76k added in Q3) and Openreach report that 7,177,000 now take an FTTC/P based “fibre broadband” service via their UK network.

Generally the highlights for BT during the past few months have been the start (roll-out) of their huge new 300Mbps G.fast broadband pilot (here) and of course Ofcom’s announcement that it had been unable to reach a voluntary agreement over the future of Openreach (here). Instead Ofcom said it would force BT to adopt “legal separation” of their network access division, which they hope will improve competition and fairness in the market.

Lest we forget that BT’s consumer ISP division has also been busy deploying the IPv6 Internet addressing standard (here), which is now live across their network. However not all of their users have IPv6 enabled broadband routers and existing subscribers with the older HomeHub 4 / 5 routers should be updated over the next few weeks/months. The other recent change of note has been BT’s earlier than expected broadband price hike (here).

Elsewhere Openreach are continuing to roll-out “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) services across the United Kingdom, which covers over 26 million premises (mostly via their 40-80Mbps capable FTTC / VDSL2 technology) and by 2020 that will also include 2 million premises passed with 1Gbps capable FTTP/H (currently it’s 350,000+). The G.fast roll-out will then add around 10 million premises to this by 2020, but that may largely overlap with existing FTTC.

Otherwise BT’s financial situation remains in good health, albeit with a few weaker areas. However this weeks Italian accounting scandal has had an impact. Apparently total adjustments relating to the investigation of BT’s Italian business amount to £268m for prior year errors, for which they’ve revised prior periods, and a specific item charge of £245m for changes in accounting estimates (£145m in Q2 and £100m in Q3).

Key Highlights from Today’s Quarterly Report
* BT Groups’ quarterly revenue hit £6,128m (up from £6,007m in Q3 2016)
* BT Group’s reported profits before tax hit £526m (down from £671m)
* BT Group’s net debt hit £8,981m (down from £9,567m)
* BT Wholesale’s quarterly operating profit hit £135m (up from £129m)
* Openreach’s quarterly operating profit hit £327m (up from £297m)
* Openreach’s quarterly capital expenditure hit £409m (up from £357m)

We should also highlight the latest update with regards to BT’s capital expenditure and clawback / gainshare due to the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK roll-out programme, which confirms that £325m of public funding is now becoming available for reinvestment into future “fibre” expansion (up from £292m in Q3 2016). The figure is likely to rise further as FTTC/P take-up improves (see the Government’s recent announcement).

Capital Expenditure and BDUK

Our base-case assumption for take-up in BDUK areas remains at 33%. Under the terms of the BDUK programme, we have a potential obligation to either re-invest or repay grant funding depending on factors including the level of customer take-up achieved. While we have recognised gross grant funding of £45m (Q3 2015/16: £85m) in line with network build in the quarter, we have also deferred £34m (Q3 2015/16: £22m) of the total grant funding to reflect higher take-up levels on a number of contracts. To date we have deferred £325m.

Now let’s take a closer look at BT’s different divisions.

BT Consumer / Retail

First we’ll examine how well BT’s own retail ISP business (sells broadband, phone, mobile and TV services directly to residential and business customers) has done over the past quarter. As usual the operator, which benefits from a strong level of advertising and consumer familiarity, appears to have delivered a good quarter for broadband and fibre growth. However the bleed of mobile subscribers has grown substantially.

On the subject of EE, the BT owned mobile business has now expanded its geographic 4G network coverage to 75% of the UK (99% population coverage) and they aim to reach 92% by September 2017, followed by 95% by the end of December 2020. The 4G customer base has also reached 18.2 million, which is well over half of their total mobile subs above.

It’s worth pointing out that BT’s own subscribers still account for the lion’s share of “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) users on Openreach’s national network, but rivals are making an increasingly big dent (see below).

Openreach & Wholesale

The results from Openreach tend to reflect the wider market, at least in respect to BT’s national network infrastructure and those independent ISPs that buy services over it (i.e. the total broadband and “fibre” lines below combine customers from both BT Consumer and many other ISPs that buy their lines from Openreach).

Note: Unbundled (LLU) lines are mostly used by ISPs that have installed some of their own kit inside Openreach’s network in order to gain more control over their own products and services (e.g. TalkTalk and Sky Broadband). In that sense fully unbundled (MPF) lines are more popular because they afford ISPs the most control and flexibility to differentiate themselves.

We note the quarterly increase of +498K in new “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) lines, which of course includes the +260K added via BT’s Consumer division. In other words, BT’s retail rivals (e.g. Sky, TalkTalk, Zen Internet etc.) accounted for +238K of the total quarterly increase (up from +224K in the previous quarter). We should also point out that the SMPF total above includes external fibre services on BT WLR (Wholesale Line Rental) lines.

Separately, BTWholesale delivered a total of just 865,000 external broadband lines for other ISPs, which has fallen by -17,000 in the quarter (worse than the -3,000 in Q3).

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Group, said:

“The good progress we’re making across most of the business has unfortunately been overshadowed by the results of our investigation into our Italian operations and our outlook. We’ve undertaken extensive investigations into our Italian business, including an independent review by KPMG, and I am deeply disappointed with the unacceptable practices by some that we’ve found. This has no place at BT, and it undermines the good work we’re doing elsewhere in the Group. We are committed to ensuring the highest standards across the whole of BT.

We face a more challenging outlook in the UK public sector and international corporate markets but we’ve seen record growth at EE, strong momentum in Consumer, and our highest ever fibre net connections in Openreach. Customer experience remains a top priority. EE is now answering 100 per cent of its customers’ calls in the UK and Ireland. In Openreach, missed appointments have halved year on year. We’ll continue to invest to ensure our service levels improve and that our customers see the benefit.

We are pushing ahead with reforms at Openreach, particularly on governance and customer service and continue to believe an agreement can be reached with Ofcom on its Digital Communications Review. We think these changes address Ofcom’s concerns and can form the basis for a fair, proportionate and sustainable settlement.”

The year ahead will no doubt present plenty of challenges for BT, most notably via their on-going battle with Ofcom over the future of Openreach. The regulator is about the notify the European Commission of their intent to introduce “legal separation” and so there’s still time for a voluntary agreement to be reached, but alternatively BT may decide to fight it out and if so then we could still be writing about this at the same time next year.

Otherwise we expect to see BT conduct a much faster roll-out of ultrafast FTTP technology during 2017, as well as the start of Openreach’s commercial G.fast deployment during the latter half of the year and at some point BT’s Consumer / Retail ISP division might even offer up that long awaited 4G Femotcell equipped home broadband router.