Vodafone leans on TV in Q3
February 3, 2021
Vodafone returned posted positive numbers in Q3 inspite of poor performance in some big markets. In Germany and Spain, in particular, its pay-TV offerings came to the rescue.
In Germany the group added 98,000 cable broadband customers, including 35,000 migrations from DSL. Overall, the company’s broadband base was up 56,000 to 10.9 million. That helped offset a drop of 75,000 TV customers. The company said it was hit by the closure of retail stores, but helped through the launch of its Apple TV box and the DAZN pay-TV offering had helped boost its premium TV performance. Its convergence play, the GigaKombi, had 28,000 additions taking the total to 1.6 million.
In Spain overall service revenue fell 1.8 per cent to €957 million. It would have been much worse without the performance in the number of TV subscriptions, with 46,000 new customers to a total of 1.56 million. In the last 18 months, since its decision not to offer pay TV football, Vodafone Spain has managed to capture 277,000 pay TV customers with an offer based on cinema and TV series. Vodafone lost 22,000 broadband customers, which it said was due to its pricing decisions and intensified competition.
Overall, Vodafone’s service revenue grew by 0.4 per cent organically over the quarter to €9.35 billion, with growth in Germany and non-European markets offsetting declines in the UK, Italy and Spain.