ONO suffered a 6% revenue fall in the second quarter due to what the Spanish cablenet described as “variable consumption”.
The tough economic climate means customers are making fewer phone calls and buyrates on PPV events have also fallen back. The economy has also impacted on the number of new customers ONO has been able to attract. Revenues of €380 million delivered an EBITDA of €182 million and a net profit of €16 million.
The indebted cable operator lost 10,000 customers on the quarter, subscriber numbers falling to 1,903,000 at June 30, 2009. A change of policy has seen the introduction of activation fees and credit scoring, to eliminate early churn, but the current economic situation in Spain means that despite recent falls net churn of 15.9% is still among the highest in Europe. ARPU among residential cable customers stood at €51.2 compared to €53.3 in the same period in 2008.
Action to increase the number of services taken by customers has helped increase the so-called RGUs (Revenue Generating Units) to 2.15 per customer from 2.09 one year ago. But the downside of the withdrawal of cable TV as a standalone product for new customers has a resulted in a 25,000 decrease in TV subscribers on the quarter to 991,000. Some 1,647,000 households took ONO’s telephony services and 1,302,000 broadband internet.
