Liberty Global today announced financial and operating results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2006.
Highlights for the year compared to the results for the same period last year (unless noted), include:
• 2006 organic additions of 1.63 million RGUs (540,000 in Q4), a 45% increase over 2005
• Revenue of $6.49 billion, reflecting rebased growth of 11%
• Operating cash flow (OCF) of $2.34 billion, reflecting rebased growth of 16%
• Loss from continuing operations increased to $334 million
• Net earnings increased to $706 million as compared to a net loss of $80 million
Liberty Global’s President and CEO Mike Fries stated, “We successfully delivered on all of our financial, operational and strategic objectives, and meaningfully exceeded our 2006 full-year guidance targets. We achieved double-digit revenue and mid-teens OCF rebased growth, rebalanced our European operations to focus on higher growth markets, and repurchased over $2.0 billion of our equity since the beginning of 2006. As we build on our 2006 results, particularly our fourth quarter performance, we are entering 2007 with strong operating momentum.”
“We now serve 2.2 million digital cable subscribers, ending 2006 with a digital cable penetration of 19%. We continue to see a significant opportunity to upsell our 10 million analog customers to advanced digital services, driven by premium content, digital video recorders, high definition and video on demand offerings. In particular, we added nearly one million digital cable subscribers organically worldwide during 2006, including over 400,000 digital cable RGUs in the Netherlands and over 300,000 digital cable RGUs in Japan. As a result of our digital initiative in the Netherlands, we finished 2006 with 23% digital penetration in the Netherlands and, on average, we are seeing an incremental ARPU of over €6 (before discounts) from our digital television subscribers, which compares to our base analog ARPU of €13.”
