Friday 30th July
Latest News
| Operating loss increases at Virgin Media |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Robert Piercy | ||||||
| Wednesday, 25 February 2009 08:14 | ||||||
|
Virgin Media's operating loss has trebled due to a write down in its Sit Up TV business according to its latest set of figures.
The company amde an operating loss of just over £50 million cpmpared to £17.8 million in the last quarter of 2007. However, the company had to write down the value of Sit Up TV by £54.8 million resulting in the loss due to its TV channels, due to it loosing one of its Freeview slots. Total revenue crept back above the £1 billion mark this quarter, an increase on three months ago but slightly down year-on-year. Virgin added 14,800 customers in the fourht quarter of 2008 giving an "on net" customer base of 4.76 million. 55.9% are triple-play customers with revenue per customer ireasing my 6p/month this quarter. The company reports another slowdown in new broadband customers, with 57,100 being added, compared to a 106,200 a year ago. The company now has 3.68 million broadband customers and it hopes to increase this further and reduce churn by upgrading basic connections to 10mb/s which it will roll out from May. The company added 44,500 new TV customers although only 15% of them have the V+ service. However, more than half - 51.8% - are regular users of the on demand TV service, which is currently rolling out the ITV Player. Virgin says that "further significant enhancements to both our library and customer interface are planned for later in the year." In mobile, Virgin did add a few new contract mobile users but lost 224,000 pre-pay customers. Monthly churn fell to 1.2%, down from 1.5% last quarter and 1.4% a year ago. Neil Berkett, chief executive of VM, said "We finished 2008 with another quarter of sound operational and financial performance. We have achieved further growth in ARPU and improvement in churn, whilst generating strong Free Cash Flow for the year. "During the quarter, we built upon the foundations we put in place to deliver a differentiated and highly competitive consumer proposition in 2009. Record numbers of customers are now using Virgin Media's services, despite the current economic environment. We are successfully giving people more reasons to choose us and they are buying more products from us than ever before, with 56% of our customers now buying three services or more. "Since its launch in December the consumer response to our next generation 50Mb broadband service has been encouraging and helped reinforce our position as the UK's leading residential broadband provider. We have also extended our lead in the video-on-demand and catch-up TV markets, which we believe to be valuable services in retaining customers and attracting prospects to Virgin Media. Over the course of 2008 we received more than half a billion views as on-demand TV came of age. "A GBP 300m repayment of our debt in the quarter, along with the amendment of our senior credit facility in November 2008, and our operational improvements mean Virgin Media today is a strong business with a stable foundation. In 2009, we intend to continue working to build stockholder value by maintaining a relentless focus on operational efficiency and delivering a range of superior services."
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26
3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved." |