Ben Verwaayen, the chief executive of BT, promised to continue to grow revenues, profits and dividends at Britain's largest telecoms group as he reported positive growth at BT's retail division for the first time in nearly four years.

As he unveiled a 13 per cent increase in group third-quarter pre-tax and exceptional profits to £643 million, Mr Verwaayen said that BT Retail had put in a "robust defence" of its traditional business, growing revenues at the division by 1 per cent to £2.1 billion during the three months to the end of December.

Consumer revenues at the unit fell during the quarter by 1 per cent, but this is an improvement following a period of persistent declines. Revenues from the new wave businesses rose 17 per cent to £1.88 billion and now represent more than a third of total group revenues.

BT Retail, one of three separate business lines created last year by the former monopoly, houses the residential phones business as well as "new wave" ventures such as broadband.

Mr Verwaayen said BT had taken a 34 per cent share of the fast-growing market for new broadband services where, according to the operator, a total of more than 10 million wholesale connections have now been established. Some 697,000 were set up during BT's third quarter, of which BT claimed nearly 237,000.

Group third-quarter revenues grew 5 per cent to £5.1 billion to take revenues over the nine-month period to just under £15 billion. Nine-month pre-exceptional profits before tax rose 2 per cent to £4.2 billion.

"This is another strong set of results; our strategy is delivering and the positive trends are gathering momentum," Mr Verwaayen said. "After 19 consecutive quarters of earnings per share growth, our expectations are to continue to grow our revenue, [pre-tax and exceptionals earnings], earnings per share and dividends for this financial year and next."

Shares in BT, which closed last night at 316.5p, rose 11.5p to 328p in early deals as the market welcomed the group's bullish numbers.

The former state-owned monopoly has moved away from the supply of domestic phones, partly owing to pressure from regulators, into areas such as broadband telephony, corporate services and the provision of networked IT.

Under a reinvention pushed through by Mr Verwaayen, BT operates three business units: BT Global Services, BT Retail and BT Wholesale. Regulators also forced it to create BT OpenReach, responsible for ensuring access for competing businesses to its ownership of local telephone exchanges.

Revenues at BT Global Services grew 4 per cent to nearly £2.3 billion and by 4 per cent to just over £1 billion at BT Wholesale.

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