Virgin Media has entered the Q1 reporting season with an across the board increase in revenues and 65,000 customers signed up to its advanced TiVo receiver. The TiVo product is now available to both new and existing customers; a second version with a 500 GB hard drive will be introduced in mid-May.
The company says that its 30 Mbps broadband tier has transformed its acquisition mix with customers signing up to higher broadband speeds. Virgin has also announced the trial of broadband speeds of 1.5 Gbps.
Revenues increased by 5.7% to £982 million. A net 20,200 cable additions, including 10,100 TV customers, meant that Virgin was in line with first quarter forecasts.
“This has been another solid quarter where we have maintained strong levels of revenue growth and generated substantial free cash flow. As more customers demand better connectivity, we have seen an increase in the take-up of faster broadband speeds and continued to improve the quality of our customer base. Alongside this, there has been strong early interest for our next generation home entertainment service, Virgin Media powered by TiVo, and we anticipate consumer demand for this will grow as we accelerate our rollout,” said CEO Neil Berkett.
Virgin’s on demand service is now used by 64% of the installed TV base, representing over 2.4 million households. Average monthly views in Q1 were 83m, an increase of 23% from the same period in 2010.
