How well did Liberty Global do in Central and Eastern Europe in the first quarter?
Just three weeks ago, I summarised the company’s regional activities in what was a very busy period. These included the consolidation of UPC’s Czech and Slovak interests into a single unit, along with an outline of UPC Romania’s investment plans for the year.
While the conference call accompanying Liberty’s latest set of results did not reveal anything too specific about the region, other than perhaps, in the Q&A session, that it will eventually also receive the 4k box being introduced by Virgin Media in the UK later this year, the results themselves were interesting. They were also largely positive.
Liberty’s European operations as a whole lost 24,000 video subscribers in the first quarter, which was a significant reduction (40%) on the number a year earlier. This was largely helped by strong trends in both Poland and Hungary.
Poland was also a key performer for Horizon TV, accounting for almost 60% (37,000) of the 63,000 new subscriber additions in the first quarter.
These helped boost the total Horizon TV subscriber base in Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic to 506,000, while the ‘Horizon-light’ subscriber base stood at 170,000 in the Czech Republic, at the end of Q1.
Meanwhile, Romania, Hungary and Poland were key drivers in the RGU additions for fixed-line telephony services in the quarter.
Liberty also notes that it is on track to either connect or upgrade to two-way over 600,000 homes in CEE this year.
On the downside, Liberty’s DTH operations in CEE saw a slight reduction in subscribers in Q1, the 825,700 total being 3,700 lower than three months earlier.
Financially, we already know from UPC Romania that its revenues in Q1 were 9.7% higher year-on-year in local currency terms, and 6.4% in USD. Figures for other Liberty operations in the region will undoubtedly soon also become available.
All in all it was a good quarter for Liberty in CEE and the trend is likely to continue for the rest of the year.