Liberty Global saw revenues decline by 4.5% in the second quarter as the TV and broadband operator felt the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company behind Virgin Media and Vodafone-Ziggo accrued losses of $504 million.
The falls came despite an increase of 8,000 customer relationships, compared to a loss of 29,000 in the same period of 2019. Virgin Media added 24,000 new customer relationships – it lost 6,000 last year.
However, operations in Belgium didn’t find favour, there was a loss of 3,000 relationships at Belgium’s Telenet, while ongoing subscriber erosion in Switzerland saw the departure of another 16,000 subscribers.
CEE (Poland and Slovakia added 3,000 customer relationships in both Q2 2020 and Q2 2019, driven by growth in new build areas.
“Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to effectively navigate through these unprecedented times,” said CEO Mike Fries. “Our fibre-rich networks continue to perform extremely well despite the surge in usage over the last several months. We understand the importance of seamless connectivity and strive to deliver the best possible products and services to our customers.”
Liberty said it continued to make progress in its pre-merger planning ahead of the merger of Virgin Media and O2 UK and was working closely with both the European Commission and UK regulators.
