Virgin stands out in lacklustre Q1 for Liberty Global
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 07 May 2019

Despite the continued positive contribution from its UK subsidiary, media giant Liberty Global has made an unimpressive start to 2019 showing falls in both revenues and operating income.

For the quarter ended 31 March 2019, the company reported revenues of $2.868 billion, down 0.6% on a year-on-on year basis annual basis while operating income tumbled 10.3% compared with Q1 2018 to 105.5 million.

In terms of customers, Liberty Global turned around a Q1 2018 showing 10,300 net customers losses to a net gain of 24,700. However in this. Liberty lost 60,500 net video customers in the quarter, over 15,0o0 more than in the quarter of the previous year.

Liberty’s UK and Ireland business from Virgin Media showed a net customer gain of 59,200, an annual increase of 32%. Yet the 46,000 telephony and 37,000 broadband subscriptions additions in Q1 2019 , offset video attrition arising from Virgin’s shift in focus to higher value TV customers. Basic video customers showed a net loss of 1,600 in the quarter while enhanced video subs fell by 22,700 during the three-month period. A year earlier Virgin had reported 9,600 net additions in video customers.

PP Foresight, tech, media and telco analyst Paolo Pescatore described Liberty’s Q1 as a modest quarter given a challenging environment. “Virgin Media now remains the crown jewels in Liberty Global’s portfolio, but also a problem child,” he said. “Moves to divest other assets shows a desire to leave Europe by maximising the value of each asset. However, acquiring Virgin Media would not cheap for any party. And would require significant long term investment to compete with BT other smaller aggressive fibre broadband providers.”