Israel’s HOT remains by far and away Altice’s most lucrative cable asset.
The latest set of results published by the Luxembourg-based company shows that its Israeli operation generated €669.4 million in revenues in the first nine months of the year, up from €634.9 million in the same period last year.
Of this, cable-based services accounted for €527 million (€509.6 million) of the total and mobile services €142.4 million (€125.3 million).
According to Altice, the increase in cable-based services revenue in Israel was mainly due to a 7.7% ARPU increase, due to increased focus on multi-play offerings; more triple-play subscriptions; and increased take-up of higher speed broadband services.
On the other hand, there was a net decrease in total cable RGUs “as our third party customer service and technical support provider had not allocated sufficient resources to manage the intake and connection arrangements for potential new subscribers.”
Altice’s HOT had 1,145,000 cable subscribers, of who 448,000 received triple-play services, in Israel as of the end of September.
The corresponding figures for its operations in Belgium and Luxembourg were 115,000 and 51,000 respectively, and 240,000 and 136,000 respectively in Portugal, where the company has owned Cabovisão since February 2012.
Total revenues in Belgium and Luxembourg in the first nine months of the year amounted to €53.1 million (€45.2 million in 2012), with cable-based services accounting for €45.7 million (€45.2 million) of the total.
The corresponding figures for Portugal were €159.6 million (€174.6 million) and €83.4 million (€88.6 million).
In Portugal, the company lost around 64.000 RGUs due to intense competition from other cable providers.
On the other hand, the company managed to reduce its operating expenses in Portugal by 19.6% year-on-year to €47.2 million in the first nine months of 2013.
Altice in total had consolidated revenues of €1.47 billion across the seven territories it operates in in the first nine months of the year.
Consolidated EBITDA amounted to €573 million