UK cable based quad player Virgin Media produced some of its best results for the June quarter, with revenues up 7.1% to £964 million which it says is its strongest revenue growth since NTL merged with Virgin Mobile four years ago. The company said that the performance was driven by rises in ARPU (up 5%) among existing customers to £45.88 a month, as well as the company’s largest net additions since the merger.
Virgin only added 9,100 new customers (7,100 were new cable customers) in what is traditionally the weakest quarter for growth, compared to a loss of 27,800 customers a year ago. The company added 188,600 gross cable customers, which was a rise of 18.2%, but that does mean that it lost 181,500 in the quarter, to leave it with a net rise of 7,100. New HD customers were up by 259,000, to 1.2 million. The digital TV base (it still has some analog) went up by 25,900 in the quarter to over 3.7 million customers.
Virgin said that its churn remains flat at 1.3% per month and that customers taking triple-play reached 62.4% and quad-play penetration increased to 11.3%, reflecting continued success with bundling strategy.
Virgin also said that it can pay down up to £700 million in debt and also issued a £375 million stock buyback plan over the next 12 months.
Neil Berkett, Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Media, said: ‘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 operating cash flow for the third successive quarter.’