BT’s first-quarter update showed flat revenue and a 4% fall in profit, nudging shares modestly lower on Thursday.
BT Group said it had made a solid start to the year, but flat revenue and a fall in profit left its shares trading slightly lower on Thursday, as markets weighed the pace of its multi-year turnaround.
Shares in BT Group are trading at 194.7p in mid-morning trade on Thursday, down 0.6% from Wednesday’s close of 195.8p. The stock opened at 194.45p and has ranged between 191.35p and 195.9p during the session. That is well below the 242.09p 52-week high struck in May, and comfortably above the 173p low hit in November 2025.
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The telecoms group reported group revenue of £4.3bn for the three months to 30 June, flat on the same period a year earlier. Adjusted UK service revenue fell 1% to £3.8bn, as growth in broadband and business connections was offset by declining voice revenue. Adjusted EBITDA fell 1% to £2.0bn, and statutory pre-tax profit dropped 4% to £505m, which BT attributed to higher finance costs, partly offset by lower restructuring costs. According to Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, writing on Investing.com, adjusted revenue and earnings both fell short of market forecasts of £4.77bn and £2.03bn respectively.
Openreach’s full-fibre network added 514,000 more premises in the quarter, taking its footprint to 23.4 million, while 574,000 customers signed up to full-fibre broadband. Openreach still lost 192,000 broadband lines to rival networks, though that marked an improvement on the previous quarter’s loss of 203,000, according to ISPreview. BT said fibre now makes up more than half of group broadband revenue for the first time. Chief executive Allison Kirkby said: “BT has made a solid start to the year. We are connecting more customers to our next-generation networks, and are increasingly the choice for mission-critical solutions, as we connect and protect the country and accelerate our transformation.”
Kirkby, now just over two years into a turnaround built on cost-cutting and fibre investment, has overseen a roughly 40% rise in BT’s share price over that period. The stock has drifted about 2% lower over the past year, against an 18.3% gain for the wider FTSE 100, as markets wait for that investment to pay off more visibly. BT’s international arm is now reported as a discontinued operation ahead of a planned joint venture with Verizon, announced in June, which the company expects to complete next year.
BT reconfirmed its financial targets, including normalised free cash flow of about £2.0bn this year, rising to roughly £3.0bn by the end of the decade. Its full-fibre build remains on track to reach 25 million premises by December, while Ofcom’s Telecoms Access Review, due later this year according to ISPreview, could reshape the competitive landscape Openreach operates in. For now, BT’s task is convincing markets that its fibre bet is starting to pay off faster than the cash it continues to spend getting there.