KPN ended the fourth quarter with 2,326,000 TV customers, of whom 2,170,000 opted for IPTV and 156,000 other services.
All three totals were lower than the corresponding figures three month earlier – 2,340,000, 2,177,000 and 176,000 respectively – as was the total RGU, including voice and broadband, which fell by 90,000 to 7,189,000 in Q4.
In its latest set of results, the Dutch telco says that the decline in converged, broadband and IPTV customers was mainly driven by the integration of the Telfort brand as acquisition of customers at the lower end of the market was discontinued and by increased competition.
Meanwhile, Fixed ARPU increased 5.2% y-on-y to € 48 in Q4, mainly driven by price adjustments effective June 1, 2019, higher inflow ARPU following the integration of Telfort and a declining customer base for PSTN and Digitenne services.
Fixed revenues declined 0.9% y-on-y mainly due to lower revenues from legacy services.
KPN had adjusted revenues of €1,393 million in Q4 2019, down 3% on a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was €561 million (-1.6%) and net profit €84 million (€131 million higher year-on-year).
In his comments on the results, CEO Joost Farwerck said: “We are on track with the execution of our strategy. We delivered on our financial guidance aspects for 2019, whilst intra-year phasing of opex and divestments negatively impacted our performance in the fourth quarter. We are transforming the company to a flexible organization that is capable to have faster time-to- market, and to bring innovation faster to our customers. Furthermore, we streamlined our organization through the disposal of several non-core assets and through ongoing simplification and digitalization of our company and processes. Our strong and disciplined cost control resulted in € 38 million net indirect opex savings in the quarter, totaling € 141 million in 2019, positioning us well to deliver on our 2019 – 2021 savings program.
“KPN is active in a highly competitive environment within an evolving landscape, which is reflected in lower net adds in Consumer and some pressure in mobile. On the other hand, solid Wholesale performance contributed to our strong position in the Netherlands.
“We are accelerating roll out of fiber and added 50k households in Q4 2019, totaling 120k in 2019. It requires us to step up construction capacity and ramp up projects to further accelerate the fiber roll out to reach our ambition of 1 million additional households by the end of 2021. We position ourselves to become the undisputed quality leader in the Netherlands, which is the foundation of our strategy focused on driving organic sustainable growth.
“In all, I am pleased with the overall progress made in 2019 and that we are recognized as one of the most sustainable telecom operators worldwide by several leading benchmarks. Together with our skilled and highly engaged employees we are committed to continue to execute and deliver on our strategy in 2020.”
