Unitymedia adds 61k digital cable subscribers in 4Q09

COLOGNE — Unitymedia, the second largest cable operator in Germany and an indirectly owned subsidiary of Liberty Global, Inc., today announced results for the financial year and quarter ended December 31, 2009.

Unitymedia Cable Business Review

The Digital TV Pay business continued to show underlying organic growth, offset by churn from customers subscribing to former Bundesliga packages, which was discontinued on June 30, 2009. The Company expects Bundesliga related churn to have largely occurred in 2009 with no meaningful churn expected going forward. Digitisation of its basic cable subscriber base stood at 30% at year-end, as Unitymedia continues on its strategy to migrate customers from analogue to digital access and to upsell premium content to its digital base.

Unitymedia launched a number of new products and enhanced services in 2009. On July 1, the Company launched a rebranded suite of genre based Pay TV packages, adding a fourth “Lifestyle” oriented pay TV package and including additional premium channels such as Discovery and Animal Planet to its existing packages. In its broadband business and in line with its strategy to be the speed leader, Unitymedia started offering Internet services with download speeds of up to 120 MB/s in the cities of Aachen and Cologne as of November 2009. Under Liberty Global ownership, the Company is seeking to accelerate Docsis 3.0 and HD roll-outs.

                                    Year ended Dec. 31,              Quarter ended 
                                    -------------------   2009/2008      Sept. 30,
(in '000s unless otherwise stated)   2009   2008   2007  YoY Change           2009
                                    -----  -----  -----  ----------  -------------
Subscribers
  Analogue Basic Cable              3,161  3,391  3,973         -7%          3,247
  Digital Basic Cable               1,362  1,228    789         11%          1,301
  Total Basic Cable Subscribers     4,523  4,619  4,762                      4,547

New Services RGUs
  Digital TV Pay                      491    568    456        -14%            470

Penetration
  Digital in % of BCS                 30%    27%    17%         4pp            29%

More: Earnings Release