LONDON: As it completes its fibre roll-out and adjusts to new technologies like AI, BT Group (BTL), Britain’s largest broadband and mobile provider, could fire up to 55,000 employees, including contractors, by 2030. This could represent more than 40% of its total staff.
Under Philip Jansen’s leadership, the company has been implementing a transformation strategy to build a nationwide fibre network and launch fast 5G mobile services, Reuters said.
The former state monopoly reported pro forma revenue and core profits growth for the year to the end of March for the first time in six years, but the cost of the company’ transformation and the impact to its free cash flow took a toll, sending its shares down more than 8% in early trade.
By the end of the 2020s, according to Jansen, BT will rely on a lot smaller staff and have a substantially lower cost base because of the completion of the fibre roll-out, digitization of operations, adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), and simplification of its structure.
“New BT Group will be a leaner business with a brighter future,” he declared.
By the group’s financial year 2030, at the latest, the total number of employees will drop from 130,000 to between 75,000 and 90,000. The company currently employs over 30,000 contractors.
By then, the majority of its full-fibre network construction will be finished.
Regarding the full-year performance, Jansen claimed that BT had advanced well while facing an “extraordinary macro-economic backdrop”.
Following the offset of a fall in enterprise, growth in networks and consumer businesses resulted in adjusted core earnings of 7.9 billion pounds ($10 billion), which was 5% higher than market estimates.
However, because of higher cash capital expenditures, free cash flow (FCF) decreased 5% to 1.3 billion pounds, at the lower half of its estimate. Free cash flow projections for 2024 were lighter than analysts had expected
