Virginmedia Quarter Results

[masefield]

Not quite sure where to place this on the Boards - however please refer to the enclosed extract from the latest quarter results - seems tp provide a guide as to the future.

Bringing 'Digital Entertainment' into homes
We grew our digital TV base by 25,900 in the quarter to over 3.7m customers. These viewers continue to enjoy our
market-leading video-on-demand (VOD) service with well over half of them using and watching VOD as part of their
everyday lives.
We are also continuing to aggressively expand our High Definition (HD) offering. A year ago, we carried one HD
channel, but this will increase to a total of 26 channels in the next few weeks. We have announced the August launch for
Sky Sports 1 and 2 HD and ten Sky Movies HD channels and we expect to continue to increase the number of HD channels. As
a result, our HD base is growing rapidly and we added a record 259,000 customers in the quarter to reach an installed
base of 1.2m.
Through our agreements with BSkyB, we have also secured long-term carriage of the Sky Basic channels and the former
VMtv channels, along with access to interactive red button sports coverage and the opportunity to deliver selected Sky
standard definition programming over the internet. We continue to work with TiVo to develop and launch a new converged TV and broadband interactive platform in the
fourth quarter.

[Kingofthedead4]

Virgin Media has reported its best ever second quarter results, after adding 9,100 new households to its cable subscription base as revenue reached £964m.

In its financial results for the three months to June 30, Virgin Media beat analyst expectations by actually adding subscribers in Q2 for the first time in over four years.

The cable operator attracted 9,100 new households over the three months, compared to a 27,800 customer loss in the same period a year ago. The strong performance helped Virgin Media to increase its overall revenue by 7.1% to £964m, with growth in all areas, including the mobile business.

Broadband growth was five times that experienced last year, with 28,100 net new customers added over the quarter. Virgin said that 43% of its broadband subscribers now take packages of 20Mbps or 50Mbps.

The company also added 22,300 net new digital television customers, although 3,600 analogue customers were disconnected in line with Virgin Media's plans. More than half of Virgin Media TV customers also regularly use its video on demand platform.

Virgin Media recently announced plans to offer high-definition versions of Sky Sports 1 and 2 on its cable TV platform, along with ten HD variants of the Sky Movies channels.

Over the second quarter, the firm added 295,000 new HD customers - up 79% year on year - to bring its total base to 1.2 million.

The Virgin Mobile business pulled in 66,300 net new customers, with revenue increasing 6.9%. Customers taking a triple-play service of TV, broadband and landline increased to 62.4% and quad-play subscribers (who also take a mobile service) grew to 11.3%.

Churn remained flat at 1.3% and average revenue per user (ARPU) was up 4.9% to a record £45.88.

The company said the operating cashflow was up 12.9% to £370m, representing the third successive quarterly double-digit OCF growth.

After running a successful refinancing programme of its debt, Virgin Media said that it plans to return £700m to shareholders and debt holders.

"A growing base of customers, combined with increased ARPU and improvements in business and mobile revenues, drove strong revenue growth and a double digit year-on-year percentage increase in OCF for the third successive quarter," said Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett.

"This performance was driven by our ability to offer households and businesses an increasingly differentiated range of digital services. Going forward, we'll continue to differentiate our propositions by proactively exploiting the advantages of our network and our mobile capability.

"Confidence in our long term ability to deliver strong free cash flow, along with the recent completion of our refinancing, enables us to announce today an initial Capital Return programme that complements our existing debt reduction schedule, without compromising our ability to make further strategic investments in the business."

Virgin Media has also confirmed plans to launch its 100Mbps broadband service by the end of the year, along with its first set top boxes enabled with technology developed by US DVR giant TiVo.

The firm has further announced a trial of aerial broadband deployment via existing electricity poles in the Welsh village of Crumlin as it looks at more ways to expand its fibre network.

Good news I thinks,

(from digi spy)

[Kymmy]

Threads merged

[Digital Fanatic]

Excellent results

[Horizon]

Beyond the mention of the trial of fibre over the poles (which I talk about in that thread) there wasn't that much news that wasn't already known about.

Berkett did say VM are moving their broadband tiers to 20,50&100 mb. And as we already know, VM intends to improve their hier tier packages especially VIP, and Berkett inferred that HD and possibly tivo would be thrown into those packages in the future as a loyalty bonus.

Berkett was very agressive in pointing out that most ADSL operators cannot provide their advertised 24mb top speeds, yet VM can. Even when BT et all move to VDSL, Berkett said they will get nowhere near the 40mb speeds for the masses that they're talking about and I agree with that. So VM's future bottom speed of 20mb will be faster than the highest tiers of most of VM's competitiors.