BT adds 40,000 TV subscribers in 2Q 2014

BT Group plc (BT.L) today announced its results for the first quarter to 30 June 2014.

BT Consumer

Revenue increased 10%, with 26% growth in broadband and TV revenue reflecting the impact of BT Sport. The improved performance in calls and lines revenue continued with growth of 2%. ARPU increased 8% year on year to £398 and BT Wi-fi usage doubled to over 12bn minutes.

Consumer line losses of 69,000 were 47% better than last year. Including business, BT added 104,000 retail broadband customers, 64% of the DSL and fibre broadband market net additions. Fibre continued to grow strongly with 226,000 BT retail fibre broadband net additions, up 15%, taking the customer base to over 2.3m.

We commenced the exchange of legacy set-top boxes in the quarter which resulted in some TV customer churn, as anticipated. As part of this process, we have also removed 35,000 inactive customers from our TV base. Excluding these, we added 40,000 TV customers in the quarter.

BT Sport had a strong quarter with continued growth in the residential subscriber base.

Key Performance Indicators – TV

                              2012/2013                   2013/2014  2014/2015
                     ------------------  --------------------------  ---------
                      Q1   Q2   Q3   Q4     Q1     Q2     Q3     Q4         Q1
                     ---  ---  ---  ---  -----  -----  -----  -----  ---------
TV customers ('000)  728  749  770  810    833    903    956  1,002     1,007*
QoQ movement ('000)   21   21   21   40     23     70     53     46         40

* Base adjusted to remove 35k inactive customers