Virgin Media Posts Loss

LONDON, August 8: An impairment charge of £366.2 million on its mobile business has led to Virgin Media posting a second quarter operating loss of £333.1 million, as compared with the year ago’s profit of £3 million.

Revenues, meanwhile, were flat at £990.5 million, with £767.1 million from the cable segment, £143.9 million from mobile and £79.5 million from the content business, which includes Virgin Media Television.

The British quad-play operator added a net total of 136,800 revenue-generating units in the quarter, up from 59,000 in the year-ago period, and churn was down from 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent. The quarter also saw triple-play penetration reach a record high of 53.1 percent. The company added 24,800 net new TV subscribers in the quarter, 54,600 net broadband customers and 55,900 net mobile-phone users.

Neil Berkett, the CEO of Virgin Media, said: "These second-quarter results represent another solid operational and financial performance as we continue to lay a strong foundation for future growth. We have enjoyed another quarter of low churn and our customers buying more products from us than ever before?.We have continued to focus on putting the customer at the heart of everything we do and improving the quality of the services and experience we offer. We’re also pleased with the improvement in performance of our mobile operation from the prior quarter.”

He continued: “In the face of a tougher national economic environment our business has demonstrated good resilience. We continue to focus on improving our operational execution and driving unnecessary cost and inefficiencies out of the business. We will continue to exploit our competitive advantages in leading next-generation broadband in the U.K. and redefining the on-demand TV experience. The second half of this year will mark a major milestone as we roll out our unrivalled 50Mb broadband service. We believe this super-fast service, combined with our leading video-on-demand product, will prove extremely attractive to existing and new customers."

—By Mansha Daswani