Liberty Global Third Quarter Results

[Media Boy UK]

Liberty Global will its third quarter 2015 results on Thursday, November 5, 2015.

http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/pre...l-In-FINAL.pdf

[denphone]

Virgin Media report Best Q3 Customer Growth in U.K. since Virgin Media formation in 2007.

Record Q3 customer1 growth in the U.K. driven by demand for our superior broadband bundles and a continued year-over-year reduction in customer churn

42,000 U.K. customer additions in Q3 and a 2,000 customer loss in Ireland resulted in a total gain of 40,000 in the quarter, a 7,000 increase as compared to Q3 2014 Combined customer churn improved year-over-year to 14.3% in Q3, with the U.K. at 14.1%

73,000 RGU3 additions in Q3, including 60,000 broadband4 and 28,000 telephony5 net adds Strong take-up of our advanced broadband and next-generation TV services during Q3 Added 191,000 subscribers taking speeds of 100+ Mbps

Nearly 3 million customers on TiVo / Horizon TV, up 102,000 56,000 postpaid mobile subscribers added in Q3 driven by Freestyle

http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/pre...ease-FINAL.pdf

[Ignitionnet]

Hmm. Driven by demand for superior broadband bundles or driven also by passing 40,000 new premises in the quarter?

[Gavin-D]

Virgin Media lost over 10,000 television subscribers in the United Kingdom in the third quarter. In the last three years it has lost over 50,000 television customers. Despite this, it reported its best third quarter customer growth since the formation of Virgin Media in 2007. Yet the cable company has still only signed up 30% of the homes it passes to its television offer.

Virgin Media has hovered around 3.7 million television customers for the last five years and has lost customers throughout 2015.

http://informitv.com/2015/11/05/virg...n-subscribers/

[Ignitionnet]

I think VM are pretty aware that they aren't going to set the world alight with their TV packages. They don't really focus the marketing around them and were never going to have an easy time selling them given the strength of Sky alongside the pretty compelling basic OTA DTV services available in the UK, not to mention BT Vision, TalkTalk TV, etc.

The UK's market is insanely competitive at every level from the pretty decent basic service offered by Freeview's OTA DTV right through to the highest end Sky packages with a whole bunch of stops in between and 4k starting to come online from BT with Sky to follow imminently.

Total contrast to the USA where the cable company was the only option for a while and still carries considerable momentum.

[Kushan]

Don't forget that a lot of people are cutting TV out in favour of things like Netflix. Sky seems to be doing all right, but I'd hazard that part of that is due to the sport coverage and the fact that they throw broadband out for basically free with a TV package. In a couple of years, I can only see the TV market declining rapidly unless it changes.

[jb66]

I think virgin done well to sell the channels they own a few years ago while they were worth something

[Kushan]

I admit at the time I thought it may have been premature, but putting their efforts into broadband makes a lot more sense. TV as we know it is dying, or at least changing. Broadband isn't going anywhere.

[denphone]

The 4th utility as they say.