Ed the Sofa Bear has been appearing in Virgin Media’s TV campaign.
Virgin Media’s churn is at its lowest level since the company was formed in 2007. It says the record low annual customer churn figure of 14.9% has contributed to a growth in cable customers of 35,000, representing the highest quarterly customer additions since Q4 2012.
An additional 88,000 organic RGUs (additional customer product units) have been added in the year to date, including 70,000 in the third quarter, which the cablenet is attributing to its ‘Big Bundles’ marketing strategy, which offers combinations in cable products, and has grown the number of double- and triple-play customers over the last 12 months.
Bosses at the Liberty Global-owned operator will be hoping the Big Bundles continue to stem the decline of TV subs, down 15,000 year on year, against annual growth in broadband, fixed-line telephony and mobile.
5,000 additional TV subscribers joined during Q3, compared to a 13,000 loss in Q3 2013.
The number of households with Virgin Media TiVo increased by 148,000 in Q3 to 2.4 million or 64% of all television subscribers.
Broadband subscribers grew by 83,000 YTD, including 49,000 in Q3, to reach 4,464,1000 subscribers. 2.5 million, or 56%, of these broadband customers took super-fast speeds of 50 Mbps or faster.
Revenues grew by 2%, quarterly to £1,047 million in Q3 and £3,145 million in the year to date. EBITDA increased 6% in both periods to £453 million in Q3 and £1,357 million in the reporting period so far.
Virgin has been upgrading the remaining parts of its legacy network to extend digital cable services to a further 100,000 homes in East London. When completed, this digital upgrade will enable these households to subscribe to super-fast broadband and TiVo for the first time. We have also begun small network extensions elsewhere, including Glasgow and Teesside.
