The rebranded Virgin Media has announced its end of year financial results. During a time when NTL and Telewest were still the consumer facing brands, the cablenet added 38,500 net TV subscribers, while 78,100 net broadband customers were also signed up. Churn was reduced to a monthly 1.7% from 1.8% in the previous quarter.
In the fourth quarter to December 31, 2006, gross additions were down slightly to 213,500 from 229,000 in the third quarter. Virgin Media anticipated the fall in the third quarter results, putting it down to a lower level of installations due to the holiday season, but isn’t the Christmas quarter supposed to be the most lucrative for pay-TV operators? Although only available to around half of the country, compare the figures with Freeview’s two million and as yet we don’t know how many households this has actually added to the DTT installed base, and 183,000 net additions to BSkyB.
Fourth quarter revenues increased to £1,081.6 million (€1.6m), an increase of £597m, helped by the merger with Telewest and the Virgin Mobile acquisition.
Meanwhile, the dispute with BSkyB over the carriage of the broadcaster’s basic channels edges towards the March 1 deadline, amid little sign of agreement.
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