Horizon Off to Strong Start for Liberty Global

November 5, 2012 World Screen
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ENGLEWOOD: Liberty Global has notched up more than 50,000 subscriptions for its recently launched Horizon TV service, the company reported along with its Q3 results.

Horizon TV made its debut in the Netherlands in September. The platform brings together television with the computer, tablets and smartphones to offer a seamless interface for viewing across multiple screens. Liberty Global reports that more than 125,000 unique online users for the service have been recorded since launch. Plans are to bring Horizon TV to Ireland and Germany next year.

For the third quarter, Liberty Global added 180,000 digital cable subs, which brings its digital penetration above the 50-percent market. This was led by the strong performances in the Belgian, Polish, German and Swiss operations. The digital base increased to 8.8 million RGUs.

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Mike Fries, Liberty Global’s president and CEO, said, “Through September 30, we have added 1.1 million organic RGUs, including 320,000 in the third quarter, and we continue to balance our market leading bundles with selective price increases in markets like Germany and the Netherlands. Our recent introduction of Horizon TV in the Dutch market was a watershed event, as we have sold more than 50,000 Horizon subscriptions and had over 125,000 unique online users since launch. Looking ahead, we expect to launch Horizon TV in Switzerland later this quarter, followed by Ireland and Germany next year.”

“We finished the third quarter with cash and equivalents in excess of $3 billion and total liquidity6 of more than $5 billion. As we disclosed last week, we intend to continue with the tender offer for the minority shares of Telenet and expect to officially launch the offer shortly. We have the requisite capital to not only fund the Telenet tender offer, but also complete our $1 billion stock buyback target for 2012. At September 30, we had approximately $380 million of equity to repurchase before year end, and we intend to remain active buyers of our stock during Q4.”