BT 2014 Annual Report Download - page 64

61
The Strategic Report
Group performance
Group performance
Adjusted earnings per share
Adjusted earnings per share increased 7% to 28.2p. This principally
reected our focus in recent years on capital expenditure eciencies
anddebt reduction.
Year ended 31 March
20112010 2012 2013 2014
0
10
5
15
20
30
25
pence
Adjusted earnings per share
17.1
20.7
23.4
26.3
28.2
Adjusted EBITDA was broadly at despite our investment in BT Sport of
around £450m. Our focus on capital expenditure eciencies and debt
reduction has resulted in lower depreciation and nance expense. As a
result, our adjusted earnings per share has grown 7%.
Adjusted earnings per share is the adjusted prot after tax attributable
to our shareholders, divided by the weighted average number of
shares in issue. As it excludes the impact of specic items it provides
a consistent measure of the operational performance of our business
overtime.
Normalised free cash Ʈow
We generated normalised free cash ow of £2,450m which was higher
than our outlook for the year and £150m above the prior year.
£m
2011 20122010 2013 2014
Normalised free cash Ʈow
Year ended 31 March
1,900
2,000
2,100
2,200
2,300
2,400
2,500
2,307
2,076
2,032
2,450
2,300
Strong cash generation across the group, our cost transformation
activities, eciencies in our capital expenditure programmes, and lower
tax and interest payments have helped generate strong normalised free
cash ow. We have invested for the future at the same time as growing
our free cash ow.
Free cash ow represents the cash we generate from operations after
capital expenditure and nance costs. It shows what cash is available
toinvest in the business, repay debt, support the pension scheme and
pay dividends.
Normalised free cash ow excludes signicant non-operational
payments that would distort the measure. Normalised free cash
ow is therefore before the impact of specic items, purchases of
telecommunications licences, pension decit payments and the tax
benet from pension decit payments.
Customer service improvement
Our customer service improvement measure was up 1.5%, but did
notachieve our target to reverse the previous years decline of 4%.
Ourservice is still not good enough and remains a key focus of our
strategy across the group.
10
5
15
20
%
Customer service improvementa
At 31 March
0
10.5
3.0
3.0
(4.0)
14.0
1.5
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014a
a Cumulative improvement from 1 April 2009.
The widespread ooding across the UK aected our service and the
strong demand for BT Sport placed considerable pressure on our contact
centre resources. Our processes have also not been good enough.
We recognise that the quality of our service is becoming increasingly
important to the way people live their lives today. We need to deliver a
step-change and are making further investments to provide a superior
service to all our customers.
Right First Time is our key measure of customer service and tracks
how often we keep the promises we make to our customers. As well as
improving service and the customer experience, keeping our promises
should mean that there is less work to do in correcting our mistakes,
andso reduces our costs.
5ead more about customer service improvement within the lines
of business performance sections from page 30