Liberty Global said it expects its development of “the most advanced fixed-mobile converged products in the markets” to support its growth, along with investments in broadband and next-generation video platforms.
The company has made a number of deals in recent months to boost its position, including the acquisition of BASE in Belgium and Cable & Wireless Communications to boost its Latin American presence.
And this week the European Commission gave phase 1 clearance for its planned joint venture with Vodafone Group in Netherlands, which Liberty describes as “great news for all Dutch consumers and businesses, as well as for our shareholders”.
In total, the company ended the period with 10.6 million mobile customers, with 3.8 million added during the quarter. The lion’s share of these (3.7 million) were CWC subscribers in Latin America gained through the acquisition – for its core Liberty Global operations the subscriber base increased by 1 per cent to 6.7 million.
But this comes coupled with falling ARPU in both Europe and Latin America – the company does not specifically split-out mobile revenue.
With regard to the company’s core European cable business, CEO Mike Fries said it “substantially outperformed our prior-year Q2 and our sequential Q1 results with the addition of 277,000 RGUs [subscription services] in Q2 this year”. Strong performances in the Germany (Unitymedia) and UK (Virgin Media) were cited.
In total the company has 53.9 million RGUs, spilt across video (22.5 million), broadband internet (17.1 million) and telephony (14.3 million).
Some 46 per cent of customers subscribe to three services, 17 per cent chose two, with 37 per cent taking just one.
For the quarter, the company reported a profit attributable to shareholders of $101.4 million, compared with a prior-year loss of $464.7 million, on consolidated revenue of $5.1 billion, up 11.1 per cent.
On an operating level, income fell to $487.8 million from $624.9 million.
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