Liberty Global gained 55,900 customers in Q4 2020 across its markets in the UK/Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland and CEE (Poland and Slovakia).
Driven primarily by the company’s convergence strategy, this contrasted with a loss of 25,000 customers in Q4 2019 and was the best quarterly performance for five years. However, while the biggest growth was seen in the UK/Ireland, both Belgium (-1,000) and Switzerland (-5,800) still saw losses in the last quarter of 2020, albeit on a lesser scale than 12 months earlier.
Liberty Global’s revenues in Q4 2020 amounted to £3,426.9 million, or 14.9% more than a year earlier on a reported basis, with the biggest growth (103.4%) being seen in Switzerland. Adjusted EBITDA was $1,347.6 million (+5.8% reported) and net loss in Q4 $1,030.5 million, compared top one of $1,386.5 million a year earlier.
In his comments on the results, CEO Mike Fries said Liberty Global saw substantial churn reduction across all of its markets and achieved a record low at Virgin Media. Moreover, it continued to extend and upgrade its network reach with the construction of 561,000 new homes last year,and is now marketing 1GB broadband services to over 20 million premises across its pan-European footprint.
He also said that its convergence strategy continues to gain traction across all of its core markets.
Furthermore, despite the impact of the Covid-19 virus, it was able to meet or exceed all guidance metrics in 2020.
