A raft of sell-offs helped telecoms group Cable & Wireless more than double its profits, it was announced today.

The disposals, including the £3.4 billion sale of its stake in mobile phone company One2One, reaped massive one-off profits for the company. Profits before tax for the year to March 31 were just over £4 billion, up 121 per cent on last year's £1.82 billion.

But the sell-off windfalls masked a fall in underlying profits which were hit by poor performance from its 54 per cent-owned subsidiary Hong Kong Telecom. Stripping out the effect of the sell-offs profits were £1.12 billion, down by almost a quarter on the previous year.

HKT is the currently being sold off by Cable & Wireless to Pacific Century CyberWorks. The sale will be the last element in a complete restructuring of Cable & Wireless which is also in the midst of selling the home phone and cable TV business of Cable & Wireless Communications to NTL. The new focus on business telecoms and internet services helped boost revenues at the group over the year which were £9.2 billion, up from £7.9 billion.

Chief executive Graham Wallace said: "These results reflect the speed and scope of the transformation of Cable & Wireless. Our strategy and market focus are clear - to be a leading provider of internet protocol and data services for business customers, concentrating on our key markets of the US Europe and Japan."

As well as carrying out a range of sell-offs Cable & Wireless has invested in businesses in Japan, where it has a 25 per cent share of International Internet traffic. It has also bought 11 internet service providers in Europe and has been investing in upgrading its networks in the US. Its new interactive television service will be rolled out in Brighton later in the summer.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.