Similar to the last few quarters, Ziggo recorded lower churn compared to the previous year, the company said at the presentation of its Q2 figures.
Customer churn in Q2 2014 was 7.6%, down from 9.5% in Q2 2013 and down from 8.6% in Q1 2014. Typically, the first and fourth quarters are traditionally the quarters with relatively high ‘seasonality’ churn compared to the other two quarters.
The number of digital TV subscribers increased by 10,000 to 2.27 million in Q2, representing a penetration of 86.3%. The number of TV-only subscribers decreased by 21.3% compared to the same quarter last year, landing at a total of 668,000 as at June 30, 2014. The decrease was mainly due to the upsell of the dual play and triple play bundles to TV-only subscribers, as well as churn among TV-only subscribers.
Subscribers to digital pay TV decreased by 34,000 during the second quarter, which was negatively affected by seasonality due to the end of the football season. For the full year, the number of subscribers to digital pay TV was down by 45,000, due to the difficult macro-environment, the switch from subscription-based to on-demand-based video consumption and increased competition from OTT premium TV providers.
Commenting on the future merger with UPC CEO René Oberman said in a statement: “Until the merger with the Dutch operations of Liberty Global closes, which is expected to happen in Q4, we will run the company completely independently. Our management team is committed to delivering the targeted financial results, whilst aiming to outperform our Dutch peers on revenue growth at the same time.”
