BT has recorded a 4% year-on-year profit drop to £505m in the three months to 30 June, while its revenue fell by 0.3% to £4.3bn.

The telecommunications firm said the drop in profit was driven by higher finance costs offset by lower restructuring costs.

It also reported that in this period, its earnings fell by almost 0.8% to £2.01bn.

BT’s fibreoptic to the premises (FTTP) footprint increased by over 500,000, totalling 23.4 million properties, and it added that it is on track to achieve its FTTP build target by December 2026.

The firm also witnessed record customer demand for Openreach FTTP, while its Openreach broadband lines dropped by 192,000, with the company expecting losses of around 800,000 in the year.

Meanwhile, its retail FTTP base growth reached record levels, increasing by 1.1 million annually to 4.8 million, comprising 4.5 million consumer connections and 300,000 business connections.

The latest update comes after BT launched an international joint venture with Verizon last month, which was designed to combine the firms’ operations to create a "scaled global connectivity business", while also marking a "significant milestone" in delivering its UK-focused strategy.

In its outlook for the rest of the year, excluding international operations, BT now expects its revenue to reach between £17.1bn and £17.6bn, while its earnings growth is set to reach between £8.1bn and £8.2bn.

Its normalised free cash flow is also expected to total around £2bn, and reach £3bn by the end of the decade.

Its mid-term guidance remains unchanged, with sustained growth across both its group revenue and adjusted earnings.

Chief executive at BT, Allison Kirkby, said the firm has made a "solid start to the year", connecting more customers to its networks and being the “choice for mission-critical solutions”.

She concluded: "Across Openreach and Consumer we achieved record new full fibre connections and take-up, resulting in fibre contributing to more than half of our broadband revenues for the first time. By investing in all our brands, and the services they offer, we're continuing to grow our Consumer customer base. In Business, service revenue is stabilising, with excellent sales order growth from major customers. In this final year of the legacy landline network, our service revenue, excluding voice, grew in the quarter.

"We expanded 5G+ further to now reach 77% of the UK population and our full fibre build is on track to reach 25 million premises by the end of December. Internationally, our proposed joint venture with Verizon will create a scaled global connectivity platform and allow us to focus on our transformation in the UK.

"No-one is upgrading and investing in the country's digital backbone at the scale and pace that BT is. We remain on track to deliver our targets, including cash flow of c.£2bn this year and c.£3bn by the end of the decade - as we create a better BT, for all of us."

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