Liberty Global Reports First Quarter 2008 Results
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008ENGLEWOOD, Colorado — Liberty Global, Inc. (“Liberty Global,” “LGI,” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: LBTYA, LBTYB and LBTYK), today announces financial and operating results for the first quarter (“Q1”) ended March 31, 2008.
Subscriber Statistics
At March 31, 2008, our total RGUs of 24.4 million consisted of 14.7 million video, 5.6 million broadband internet and 4.1 million telephony subscribers. During the first quarter of 2008, we added 348,000 RGUs, including 302,000 organic additions. Since March 31, 2007, we have increased our total RGU base by approximately 7% or 1.6 million RGUs.
Bundling initiatives continue to drive solid results for our multi-play strategy and ARPU per customer growth. We recently introduced new, simplified bundles in a number of countries, including the Netherlands and Hungary. Of our 16.1 million customers at March 31, 2008, 35% of our base or 5.6 million customers take at least two of our services. Furthermore, we have generated excellent growth in triple play customers, an increase of 33% or 657,000 customers in the last twelve months. We now have 2.6 million triple play customers representing 16% of our base. The most significant bundling growth has recently occurred in our Central and Eastern Europe (“CEE”) markets, particularly, Poland, Hungary and Romania. In terms of a benchmark, our Chilean and Japanese operations are the bundling leaders, with approximately 40% and 25% of their respective customer bases subscribing to the triple play.
Our organic growth continues to be driven by the success of our advanced services. For the quarter, we added 182,000 broadband internet and 177,000 telephony subscribers, and lost 57,000 video subscribers. Broadband internet and telephony remain consistent performers, as speed leadership, high-value voice plans, and bundling and tiering offers, have supported the growth in these products. In particular, our operations in CEE showed continued strength, as organic internet and telephony additions increased by 4% and 20%, respectively, over the quarter ended March 31, 2007. In terms of our consolidated penetrations, we ended the first quarter with 22% internet penetration and 16% telephony penetration.
With respect to video, our organic loss in the quarter reflects increased competition in certain of our markets and/or higher levels of churn, particularly in the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In terms of digital (digital cable and DTH), we added 293,000 organic digital subscribers, of which more than 270,000 were digital cable additions. Our organic digital cable additions represent an approximate 59% increase over additions in the comparable prior year period. Our operations in Belgium, Chile, the Czech Republic, Japan and Switzerland accounted for a substantial majority of our digital cable additions in the quarter.
As a result of our strong level of digital cable additions over the last twelve months, we have brought our digital cable penetration to 27%, an 800 basis point increase from our digital penetration at March 31, 2007. Our digital growth has continued to gain momentum, as we now offer digital cable in 14 of our 15 markets, and are positioned to launch in Poland later this month. Importantly, our digital product, particularly the take-up of advanced digital features, has been instrumental in driving video ARPU,8 especially in the Netherlands. In the first quarter, we generated incremental digital video ARPU of €10 on our base of 563,000 digital subscribers in the Netherlands, a substantial increase over our incremental digital video ARPU of €4 at year end 2006 and €8 at year end 2007. As we continue to roll-out advanced digital video features across Europe and leverage our common digital platform, we expect our overall European video ARPU to be positively impacted.
Consolidated Operating Data – March 31, 2008
Analog Cable Subscribers |
Digital Cable Subscribers |
DTH Subscribers |
MMDS Subscribers |
Total Video |
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UPC Broadband Division: | ||||||||
The Netherlands | 1,555,900 | 562,700 | – | – | 2,118,600 | |||
Switzerland | 1,257,600 | 299,700 | – | – | 1,557,300 | |||
Austria | 464,400 | 77,000 | – | – | 541,400 | |||
Ireland | 247,500 | 229,400 | – | 101,700 | 578,600 | |||
Total Western Europe | 3,525,400 | 1,168,800 | – | 101,700 | 4,795,900 | |||
Hungary | 696,400 | – | 173,000 | – | 869,400 | |||
Romania | 1,167,900 | 48,800 | 124,700 | – | 1,341,400 | |||
Poland | 1,013,600 | – | – | – | 1,013,600 | |||
Czech Republic | 408,600 | 155,500 | 122,900 | – | 687,000 | |||
Slovakia | 255,400 | 6,100 | 29,900 | 7,200 | 298,600 | |||
Slovenia | 147,800 | 1,100 | – | 3,800 | 152,700 | |||
Total Central and Eastern Europe | 3,689,700 | 211,500 | 450,500 | 11,000 | 4,362,700 | |||
Total UPC Broadband Division | 7,215,100 | 1,380,300 | 450,500 | 112,700 | 9,158,600 | |||
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Telenet (Belgium) | 1,257,100 | 438,200 | – | – | 1,695,300 | |||
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J:COM (Japan) | 660,800 | 1,563,500 | – | – | 2,224,300 | |||
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The Americas: | ||||||||
VTR (Chile) | 638,700 | 221,300 | – | – | 860,000 | |||
Puerto Rico | – | 85,100 | – | – | 85,100 | |||
Total The Americas | 638,700 | 306,400 | – | – | 945,100 | |||
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Austar (Australia) | – | 8,800 | 669,400 | – | 678,200 | |||
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Grand Total | 9,771,700 | 3,697,200 | 1,119,900 | 112,700 | 14,701,500 | |||
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More: Earnings Release
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