BT is to cut between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade as the telecoms company becomes a leaner business.
The announcement was made alongside full-year results in which the company reaffirmed its target for Openreach to reach 25 million premises with full-fibre broadband by the end of 2026.
Philip Jansen, chief executive, said: “By continuing to build and connect like fury, digitise the way we work and simplify our structure, by the end of the 2020s BT Group will rely on a much smaller workforce and a significantly reduced cost base.”
The cuts will include employees and third-party contractors. BT’s total existing workforce, including subcontractors, is 129,000. It has 30,000 subcontractor roles, most of them overseas.
The cuts are not expected to be immediate but will be phased in as more of its full-fibre network is built.
BT reported a 12 per cent drop in pre-tax full-year profits to £1.7 billion as growth in Openreach was “more than offset by decline in the other units”. Revenue fell 1 per cent to £20.68 billion.
The group met market expectations with a 5 per cent rise in full-year adjusted core earnings of £7.9 billion but free cashflow fell 5 per cent to £1.3 billion, at the lower end of its guidance as a result of higher capital expenditure. BT shares fell 12p, or 8 per cent, to 136 ¼p.
Earlier this week Vodafone announced plans to cut 11,000 jobs over three years as Margherita della Valle, its new chief executive, looked to simplify the struggling telecoms group and turn it around. It was the largest round of cuts in Vodafone’s 40-year history and amounts to about 12 per cent of the company’s 90,000 global workforce. The axe will fall mostly across Europe.
Source: The Times
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