Liberty Global reports Q3 2022 results

DENVER, Colorado — Liberty Global plc today announced its Q3 2022 financial results.

CEO Mike Fries stated, “In Q3, we delivered aggregate broadband and postpaid mobile growth of 186,000 new subscribers, supported mostly by broadband subscriber gains in the U.K. and positive postpaid trends across all our core FMC markets.”

Q3 Operating Highlights

Sunrise (Consolidated)

Sunrise continues to deliver strong mobile performance, supported by robust B2B delivery and its flanker brand yallo which continues to perform well as the business generates revenue growth in Q3. Sunrise continues to reinforce yallo’s full service offerings, launching yallo Free TV for new and prospective customers, and has also launched a Smart Upgrade program through a partnership with Apple. The Sunrise rebranding continues to resonate with strong postpaid mobile performance across all brands, achieving 42,000 net adds in the quarter. Broadband performance was flat as expected in Q3 given the ongoing phase out of the UPC brand. Supported by a strong mobile offering together with the powerful fixed line network, FMC penetration remains high at 57% of Sunrise’s broadband base.

Telenet (Consolidated)

Continued growth of Telenet’s FMC customer base in Q3 2022 was driven by continued uptake of “ONE(Up)” bundles as growth in the mobile customer base accelerated with 18,000 postpaid mobile net additions. Telenet also recently entered into a binding agreement with Fluvius to develop “the data network of the future” in Flanders. Both companies will contribute their fixed network assets to incorporate a new infrastructure company “NetCo” that will invest in the evolution of the current HFC network into a FTTH network.

VMO2 (Non-consolidated Joint Venture)

VMO2 continued growing its fixed and mobile customer base in Q3 while announcing the U.K.’s fastest WiFi guarantee. Growth in VMO2’s fixed customer base and continued demand for fast, high-quality connectivity drove Q3 broadband net additions to 19,000. Postpaid mobile continued to show growth with net adds of 47,000 during the quarter. Average speed across the company’s broadband base increased 29% YoY and now reaches 261Mbps, more than 4x the national average. Less than a year after the launch of VMO2’s first FMC bundle, a significant milestone has been achieved with more than 1 million customers taking a Volt bundle, highlighting our rapid and substantial progress in fixed-mobile convergence. Meanwhile, Project Lightning has passed 330,000 premises since the start of the year and the company remains on-track to deliver over 500,000 premises in 2022.

VodafoneZiggo (Non-consolidated Joint Venture)

VodafoneZiggo continues to improve its commercial momentum despite increased promotional intensity in the Dutch market. At September 30th, VodafoneZiggo is passing 2.5 million converged SIMs and 1.5 million converged households9, which continues to drive improvement in Net Promoter Scores and reduce churn. VodafoneZiggo delivered 67,000 mobile postpaid additions in Q3 and grew mobile postpaid ARPU. Total broadband RGUs declined by 9,000 in Q3 while B2B broadband RGUs continued to record solid growth, with 6,000 added in the quarter. More than 90% of VodafoneZiggo’s fixed network footprint is connected to Gigabit speeds and on track to deliver nationwide coverage in December. Successfully implemented an average 3.5% price increase as of July 2022 which helped generate rebased revenue growth in Q3.

Customer Growth – Organic customer net additions (losses) by market

             Three months ended   Nine months ended
                  September 30,       September 30,
             ------------------  ------------------
                 2022      2021      2022      2021
             --------  --------  --------  --------
Switzerland   (3,200)   (1,600)   (6,800)   (1,100)
Belgium.      (7,700)   (2,300)  (17,600)  (13,100)
U.K.*               -         -         -    41,700
Ireland       (1,900)   (1,100)   (7,800)   (1,800)
Slovakia      (1,200)     (400)   (5,600)   (1,100)
Total        (14,000)   (5,400)  (37,800)    24,600

* The 2021 amounts represent organic net additions of the U.K. JV Entities through the June 1, 2021 closing of the U.K. JV Transaction.