MORE than £650 million has been added to the market value of telecoms giant BT after it benefited from a surge in broadband contracts and set out plans for the roll-out of a superfast service.
The company, run by Scot Ian Livingston, said it planned to start doubling broadband speeds to up to 80 megabits per second (Mbps) to homes and offices from spring. It is also to launch an up-to-330 Mbps ultra-fast fibre connection.
BT took revenue of £4.8 billion in the three months to December 31, its third quarter, a 5% fall on last year, but in line with market expectations.
The drop was 3% after stripping transit revenues, which pass through the business and do not affect profits.
However, it performed strongly on the indicators closely watched by the City. Adjusted free cash-flow was up £65m to £634m while underlying earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation was up 3% to £1.5bn.
Mr Livingston, who is also a director of Celtic Football Club, brought forward his target of generating £6bn in annual underlying earnings by 2013 to the end of this financial year
Mr Livingston said: "We have delivered another quarter of growth in profits and cash-flow despite the economic headwinds.
"In the UK, our fibre roll-out has accelerated bringing super-fast broadband within reach of over seven million homes and businesses and we remain the number one broadband retailer with more than six million customers."
BT's shares closed up 8.1p, or 3.9%, at 214p, taking its market value to £16.6bn. It took on 146,000 new retail broadband customers during the period, representing 56% of the market of net additions.
It added 95,000 super-fast broadband customers, taking the total to 400,000.
The company said that homes and businesses where super-fast fibre broadband was available would have access to speeds of up to 80Mbps from this spring, against a UK average of 7.6Mbps.
BT is also planning what it calls Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) broadband that offers speeds of up to 300Mbps.
From spring 2013 this will be available in those areas of the country where super-fast broadband has been deployed but will incur an installation charge.
Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, said: "FTTP on demand is a very significant development.
"It will be particularly welcome news for small businesses wishing to benefit from the competitive advantage offered by such speeds."
BT's pension deficit was £4.1bn, compared to £2.5bn at the end of September as it was affected by relatively high inflation and the impact of the Bank of England's quantitative easing plan.
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