Kabel Deutschland says it is concerned for the supplies of its DVR product following the recent flooding in Thailand.
In a statement the cablenet said the combination of floods and supply chain interruptions meant that the “sourcing of HD DVRs at planned volumes is not secured over the next months, which creates uncertainty around DVR sales.”
Recent suppliers of DVR product to KDG have included Sagemcom and Humax.
Last October Pace, a former KDG supplier, said floods at hard driver supplier Western Digital’s Bang Pa-In facility in Bangkok would hit shipments through until the end of the year, but other manufacturers are understood also to have been hit.
The supply issued marred an otherwise good set of half-year results that lead to a 5.6% increase in revenues. In its first-half figures, the German cablenet recorded revenues of €830.1 million and a positive net result of €44.9 million, compared to last year’s loss of €8.6 million.
The total number of services taken (RGUs) rose by 660,000 to over 13 million. The Company invested a total of €178.2 million in the cable network and customer acquisition in the first half of fiscal year 2011/2012 (previous year €141.6 million).
However, due to the floods in Thailand and supply chain interruptions for hard disk drives, sourcing of HD DVRs at planned volumes is not secured over the next months, which creates uncertainty around DVR sales and Capex
KDG’s so-called ‘new services’ of premium TV, internet and phone now account for 32.2% of the total number of the cable operator’s RGUs, compared to 27.5% in the previous year. However, the downside is that KDG again lost customers, now serving 8.690 million and down from 8.864 million in September 2010.
