ONO profits up, revenues and subs fall
May 22, 2009
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The largest Spanish cable operator, ONO, ended the first quarter with a net profit of E12.06 million, 61.4 per cent up than the same period the previous year, in spite of the fact that its revenues fell by 3.2 per cent to E338 million and its subs dropped by 1.8 per cent to 1.8 million.
Consumption in telephony and pay-per-view events has dropped reducing by 0.3 per cent the ARPU to E51.9. The company managed to reduce the churn-rate from 20.9 per cent to 17.8 per cent.
ONO cut its operating costs by14.3 per cent to E115 million, following the reshuffle of its offer, a fall of its advertising costs, and the redundancy programme.
As of the end of March, ONO had 1,845,000 subs, 1,646,000 for telephony services, up 1.9 per cent; 1,295,000 for broadband internet, with 55,000 new additions over the last year and with 12,000 new clients in the first quarter of 2009; 1,016,000 are subscribed to its pay-TV offer, up 0.5 per cent (5,000 new clients) against the same period the previous year, but losing subs in the first quarter with a fall of 23,000 customers.