BT has announced that 2,000 jobs have been cut after its revenue fell by 3% year-on-year, leading to revisions of its full-year expectations.

In the six months to 30 September, the telecommunications firm said that this revenue drop to £10.1bn was mainly due to "challenging conditions in business", which were principally driven by non-UK trading in its global and portfolio channels.

The group’s EBITDA increased by 1% to £4.1bn, however, its profit before tax fell by 10% as a result of lower revenue and higher specific costs.

The results come as the firm continued to accelerate its business transformation.

As part of this procedure, BT has announced that it has cut 2,000 jobs across the business.

This is in line with its target to reduce its employee capacity from its current level of 118,000 down to between 75,000 and 90,000 employees.

Chief executive at BT, Allison Kirkby, said: "We have accelerated the modernisation of BT Group in the first half of the year. We've ramped up our full fibre build and connections, seen further improvements in customer satisfaction, and our cost transformation contributed to growth in EBITDA and normalised free cash flow despite revenue declines driven by our non-UK operations and a competitive retail environment.

"Our cost to build continues to reduce, enabling us to increase this year's build target to 4.2 million with no additional capex spend."

In its outlook, BT reduced its expected revenue for the full financial year by between 1% and 2%, reflecting "weaker non-UK trading" and "a softer environment in corporate and public sector".

Its expected EBITDA, capital expenditure and free cash flow remain the same.

In the mid-term, it expects its EBITDA to grow ahead of revenue, enhanced by cost transformation from the 2026 to 2030 financial years.

However, it added that changes to employers’ National Insurance contributions and increases to the minimum wage would add £100m to its costs next year.

Investment director at AJ Bell, Russ Mould, concluded: "BT may have kept its profit and cash flow guidance intact but a cut to projected full-year revenue alongside its first-half results is enough to spook the market. This seems fair given the lacklustre and uneven performance delivered by the telecom giant in recent years.

"Kirkby faces a difficult task in simplifying and streamlining BT, which with its expensive foray into sports rights in the mid-2010s overextended itself, but she has at least made progress in getting costs and spending under control.

"It’s these factors which have allowed the company to avoid downgrades on profit and cash flow and manage an increase, albeit modest, in the dividend, although the market won’t love the higher level of debt reported."

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