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The BT Group (LSE: BT.A) share price has having a great time in 2025, up 55% by late July. But since then it’s fallen almost 20%. So why have investors been dumping the stock?
It goes against the BT bullishness that enthused investors since CEO Allison Kirkby took charge in February 2024. Since then, she refocused BT’s efforts, cut costs, and made the dividend look a lot more sustainable. A forecast yield of 4.6% is attractive, especially from a company with high capital expenditure.
But then the company’s first-half results, reported 6 November, were a bit disappointing.
Customer losses
Openreach rollout is still going strong. And full fibre to the premises (FTTP) made more than 2.2m connections in the half. But the broadband market is seeing weakness. And competitors are drawing people away from BT’s offerings — I’ve had several knocking at my door this year trying the hard sell.
The net result is a loss of 242,000 broadband customers in Q2. The company still insists its 2026 expectations remain on course, predicting double the run rate of the second half this year. But that fall in customer numbers was a fair bit worse than analysts expected.
Yet that’s not the cause of the BT share price weakness since the summer. In fact, BT actually picked up slightly on the day, and it’s been essentially flat in the days since.
Price slide
The share price slide had set in well before this latest update. So maybe there are — at least — two factors at play. Quite a few investors might well have taken profits after BT hit its 52-week high. After all, anyone who bought in the lows of 2024 could have been sitting on gains of well over 100%.
And investors might have been slowly moving away from BT in anticipation of that growing competition and falling customer numbers. The only thing I can say with any certainty is the market often does the exact opposite of what I might be expecting.
So where does that leave us? I do think much of the enthusiasm for BT was justified following the company’s success under Kirkby. But maybe it just got a bit overheated, and things are cooling a bit now?
Bull-to-bear
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Over the decades I’ve followed BT (I worked in telecoms in a previous occupation) I’ve come to one conclusion. I reckon it’s a love-it-or-hate-it-stock. I’ve rarely encountered investors who don’t have an opinion either way, at least not among those who watch this sector.
And to be fair, my own take has swung between positive and negative more than once.
So what should investors do now? I really do see BT as a tempting long-term consideration under the newish boss. Very high debt worries me. But BT has been managing it well enough. And I’m more confident about dividend stability than I’ve been for quite a few years.
I’m watching and waiting to see how the full year goes.
