Liberty Global Q4 “delivers in challenging conditions”
February 23, 2023
Liberty Global has announced its Q4 2022 financial results. Revenue decreased 4.1 per cent YoY on a reported basis and increased 0.8 per cent on a rebased basis to $1.84 billion (€1.74bn). Q4 Adjusted EBITDA decreased 13.4 per cent YoY on a reported basis and 4.4 per cent on a rebased basis to $597.3 million.
In a lengthy statement, CEO Mike Fries said: “Our fourth quarter and full year results demonstrate the continued resilience of our business model as we delivered on all guidance metrics, despite challenging macro conditions. There remains ever-increasing demand across our footprint for reliable access to high-quality fixed and mobile connectivity and we continue driving product innovation to ensure superior customer experiences. Financially, while we’re not immune from the impacts of high energy and labour costs across our core FMC businesses, we continue to take actions to maintain strong operating margins while further investing in our market-leading fixed and mobile networks. This leaves us well positioned to deliver for shareholders in 2023, underpinned by our 10 per cent minimum buyback commitment and $6 billion of liquidity, including $3.4 billion of corporate cash.”
“In Q4, we delivered aggregate broadband and post-paid mobile growth of 197,000 net new subscribers, supported by a return to broadband additions across all of our FMC markets as well as continuing positive post-paid trends. On the financial front, we reported stable rebased revenue growth in the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands in Q4 while our rebased revenues across the footprint were broadly stable for the full year. Synergy realisation and price adjustments helped support 10 per cent rebased Adjusted EBITDA growth in the UK and 5 per cent in Belgium in the fourth quarter, along with stable to growing rebased Adjusted EBITDA across all FMC markets for the full year.”
“We made big strides on our fixed network strategies in 2022, including the formation of our new joint venture in the UK (nexfibre), our FTTH agreement with Fluvius in Belgium and the strong start to our FTTH overlay in Ireland. Furthermore, at VMO2 we accelerated our UK Lightning build in 2022 as planned while kicking off the FTTH upgrade of our existing HFC network. And it’s worth noting that we already offer gigabit speeds to over 31 million aggregate homes passed by our fixed networks, which is currently the largest fixed 1Gig footprint in Europe, with a clear roadmap to 10 gigabit broadband speeds for all our FMC Champions.”
“Financially, we delivered on all of the 2022 guidance targets for our FMC Champions and we exceeded our Full Company Distributable Cash Flow guidance, at guided FX rates. Our FY22 as reported Full Company Distributable Cash Flow of $1.6 billion represented a 17 per cent YoY growth despite FX headwinds during the year. We expect our Distributable Cash Flow to remain broadly stable at $1.6 billion in 2023, supported by shareholder distributions from our joint ventures in the UK and the Netherlands and free cash flow from our consolidated operating companies in Switzerland and Belgium.”
Our balance sheet remains strong with ~$4.6 billion of total consolidated cash and over $6 billion of total liquidity at year end, providing future optionality. We remain committed to a disciplined capital allocation in our ventures portfolio while driving opportunistic financial investments, such as our recently acquired 5 per cent interest in Vodafone, an undervalued asset with numerous near and mid-term catalysts. Simultaneously, we continue to believe our own shares offer compelling value at current price levels. Supported by our strong cash flow generation, we repurchased 14 per cent of our shares outstanding in 2022, for $1.7 billion, and have retired 50 per cent of our total shares outstanding since 2017. We remain committed to our 10 per cent repurchase floor of shares outstanding in 2023,” Fries concluded.