Advanced Television

Virgin adds 15,000 pay-TV, 40,000 broadband

May 7, 2014

Virgin Media has moved back into revenue growth, adding 15,000 pay-TV customers and more than 40,000 broadband subscribers in Q1 2014.

The results mark a return to form for Virgin Media, acquired by John Malone’s Liberty Global last year. Revenues had dipped 1.1 per cent during its traditionally prosperous Christmas quarter after a slump at its corporate services arm, Virgin Media Business.

“Virgin Media’s positive momentum as part of Liberty Global continues,” said the chief executive, Tom Mockridge. “We have added twice as many customers as the same period a year ago.”

Over a third of Virgin’s customers are now on superfast speeds of 60 Megabits a second or more. Demand for Internet at peak times is up 60 per cent year on year, as households connect growing numbers of devices to their home Wi-Fi – the number connecting five or more devices has doubled in a year to around 880,000.

Revenues were up 1 per cent to £1.044 billion. However, momentum is still behind the same period last year, when the increase was 3.6 per cent.

Average revenue per customer continued to grow, up 3 per cent to £49.26, and the group’s mobile offering continued to grow, adding 8,300 customers on both contracts and pre-pay tariffs. Virgin now has 4.9 million customers, and nearly 3 million of them take a mobile phone subscription.

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