Liberty Global has come through a flat first quarter with growth from its UK, Switzerland, and Netherlands businesses, brought about by new mobile and broadband customers.
“Demand for connectivity remains high across our European markets and we are seeing improved pricing power as inflation picks up, competition rationalizes and the regulatory environment eases,” said Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries, adding that the company was “largely hedged on energy costs” against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
In the UK, Project Lightning delivered 101,000 new premises taking Virgin Media’s cumulative UK Lightning footprint to 2.8 million homes, it’s anticipated another 500,000 new premises will be added in 2022.
In Switzerland, where the competitive environment has softened slightly, there were 11,000 broadband net additions for Sunrise in Q1.
There was limited subscriber growth for Belgium’s Telenet, though the FMC customer base in Q1 2022 still increased through the success of the ONE Up bundles. There were 3,000 broadband net adds and 9,000 postpaid mobile net additions.
The arrival of Viaplay in the Dutch market and the resulting promotional activity increased competition and saw broadband RGUs decline by 17,000. Vodafone Ziggo still saw 37,000 mobile postpaid additions, passing the 5 million SIMs milestone.
Liberty Global’s Q1 revenue decreased 47.0% year-on-year on a reported basis and increased 1.5% on a rebased basis to $1,853.3 million.
