Customers are making a fast track to telecoms firm Plusnet

The Sheffield-based company, which is owned by BT, decided to drop its “Good, honest, broadband from Yorkshire” strapline six months ago.

Over the past week it has launched a new TV campaign to advertise its superfast broadband offering as it takes on rivals like Virgin Media.

The advertisement, which was shown during ITV’s flagship programme The X Factor, shows an old woman whizzing ahead of other drivers after pressing the Super Fast button on her car.

Plusnet’s chief executive Jamie Ford said: “Plusnet is a smaller brand than some of those that we are competing against and our biggest challenge remains getting people to understand who we are.

“Getting that message across through advertising is a key focus for us and a key investment for us.”

In its latest annual results which have just been released at Companies House, Plusnet reported a move back into profit.

The group made a pre-tax profit of £17.6m in the year to March 31 following a £27m loss the previous year. Turnover rose from £88.6m to £113.4m.

Gross profit increased from £10.6m to £61.1m following a steep reduction in the cost of sales from £78m to £52.3m.

Plusnet said its profits improved over the year as a result of customer growth, selective pricing and cost reduction initiatives.

These helped to improve overall efficiency and in turn, raised the bottom line.

Plusnet said the broadband market continues to be “extremely competitive” in the UK following the introduction of TV, phone and broadband bundles by competitors aiming to gain market share.

Plusnet said it has performed well despite these tough conditions by focusing on customer service, investment in marketing and competitive deals.

The group reported a large increase in both broadband and phone customers.

It said an aggressive pricing policy and investment in advertising will enable the company to increase both its customer base and revenues.

The group is working closely with other areas of BT to increase revenues and work in partnership with BT Retail on new prod- ucts.

Plusnet said that external turnover rose from £75m in 2011 to £102m in 2012.

Intra group turnover within the bigger BT parent company fell from £13m to £11m in the year to March 31.

Plusnet said that although the broadband market is competitive, it believes it will continue to expand its reach.

It recently launched a new product, Plusnet Extra Fibre, which is a superfast broadband offering giving customers speeds of up to 76 Mb/s, with a 250GB usage allowance.

This is more than two thousand times faster than the dial-up internet Plusnet offered when it launched in 1997 with typical speeds of 28.8 Kbps.

Mr Ford said the new product increases speeds at a lower cost for customers.

“It is eight times faster than the average copper broadband product so it is exciting for us at Plusnet to be offering not just really good value products, but also really the very fastest and high tech products in the marketplace,” he added. Plusnet has more than half a million customers across the UK.

The group, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary, has increased its employee numbers from 440 in 2011 to over 600.

“With the combination of new products, the building move, our continued efforts to grow our brand awareness through advertising, we are very hopeful we can continue to grow and with that grow our employee base,” said Mr Ford

“It’s been a good period of growth for us in the last couple of years, a combination of bringing some of the call centre operations back from South Africa – we do all our call centre work in the UK in Sheffield – plus growth in customers coming to us.”

In August it won a four star rating from consumer magazine Which? for the third year runn- ing.

In order to win the rating, Plusnet’s UK home phone and broadband service had to achieve an overall score of at least 70 per cent in a consumer satisfaction sur-vey.

In July, it won the Best Consumer Fixed Broadband award at this year’s Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) awar- ds.

Plusnet was bought by BT in 2007.

Second site considered

Plusnet has drawn up plans to set up a second site in Yorkshire.

The group’s chief executive Jamie Ford said that if the firm’s growth trajectory continues over the next year he will look at opening a second site. He said this is likely to be outside of Sheffield, but hopefully in the Yorkshire region.

The business recently moved to a new site in Sheffield.

“It’s a reflection of our growth that we have had to do that. So we are creating lots of jobs in the area. To make sure we could get everyone in we had to move to a new space,“ said Mr Ford.

Plusnet is now based at office space The Balance in the centre of the city.