April 20, 2011

Virgin Q1 2011 results

Press release highlights:

Sustainable revenue growth and operating leverage driving strong free cash flow

  • Revenue growth in all areas; total up 5.7% to £982m
    - Operating income up 58.9% to £111m
    - Net cash provided by operating activities up 34.3% to £272m
Good operational performance through quality customer growth

  • Quality of customer base continues to improve
    - Launch of 30Mb broadband tier has transformed acquisition mix
    - 39% of new broadband customers taking 20Mb tier or higher, up from 15% in Q1-10
    - Broadband revolution gains pace, with world's fastest cable trial of 1.5Gb
    - Premium TV customers increased 22%; HD penetration increased to 41%
    - 65,000 pre-registered for next-generation TiVo TV; now available to new customers
    - Q1 cable ARPU3 up 2.6% to £46.16
  • Cable customers up 1.2% in last twelve months with 20,200 net additions in Q1
Leading in next generation digital entertainment
Our existing TV service stands apart from other services with, advantages such as access to an unparalleled library of on demand programming. Over 2.4m families, representing 64% or our TV base, are now regularly enjoying our on demand TV service. Average monthly views in Q1 were 83m, an increase of 23% from the same period in 2010.
Virgin Media's 3D on demand TV service goes from strength to strength with a growing line-up of movies courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Disney such as 'Jackass 3D' and 'TRON: Legacy'. We continue to work with content creators to source the best programming.
We grew our TV base by 10,100 customers in the quarter to a total of 3.8m. Of these customers, over 1.5m or 41% are able to experience HD after we added a further 66,400 HD customers in the quarter.
At the end of last year, we launched our leading entertainment service powered by TiVo, with its game-changing interface that brings together the best of TV, on demand and the web. In these early stages, demand continues to grow and, having already added thousands of customers, we are in the process of connecting the 65,000 who have pre-registered. The service is now available for all new and existing customers to order.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

tv take up went up when vm finally listenened to there customers and obtained a number of HD Channels,Now no new channels since.New figures show tv take up down by 70 %.Think the figures speak for thereselves,Tivo aint gonna do it alone and vm dont do something about it they will drop more.Demand,3d and tivo is not gonna keep people content is the key and i cant believe we are now having to start reminding them of this again.

Erich said...

Tivo could make a real difference, if they ever get it past the Beta stage, but VM have yet to really make a compelling case for what it is, and why people need it, compared to the great job Sky did selling Sky+

I don't think there was that much VM could have done to maintain the TV up-take numbers they got on the back of an influx of new HD channels, so there was always going to be a subsequent drop here.