Net Loss Widens at Liberty Global

ENGLEWOOD, May 8: While
revenues gained 24 percent to $2.6 billion, Liberty Global posted a wider net
loss for the first quarter of $155.6 million from the year-ago period’s $136.1
million loss, partly as a result of higher interest and income tax expenses.

Mike Fries, the president
and CEO of the company, said: “When you look across our core metrics and value
drivers, this was a strong first quarter. OCF was up 34 percent year-over-year
driven primarily by a combination of strengthening local currencies and 14
percent rebased growth (including Telenet). Our OCF margin is now over 42
percent and our capital expenditures decreased as a percentage of revenue. In
addition, we added nearly 360,000 organic voice and data RGUs in the quarter
and over 270,000 digital cable subscribers, a 59-percent improvement over last
year’s digital cable additions. By the end of this month we will have
introduced digital cable services in all of our European markets where we're
already experiencing better than expected sell-through of high-end video
services and applications such as premium tiers, DVR, VoD and HD.6 The
combination of these initiatives and the growth in our digital cable RGUs
resulted in an increase in UPC’s digital cable revenue of over 35 percent in
the quarter, as compared to the same period last year.”

Fries continued: “While
most of our markets continue to perform in line with or ahead of our OCF
expectations, certain of our European operations, in particular Austria,
Hungary and Romania, experienced unique competitive challenges during the
quarter which also impacted revenue and, to a lesser extent, net additions for
the group. We have implemented, and are beginning to see the benefits from, a
variety of customer retention strategies and new marketing offers to improve
our performance in these markets.”

At the end of the quarter,
the total 24.4 million RGUs consisted of 14.7 million video, 5.6 million
broadband Internet and 4.1 million telephony subscribers. The total RGU base
was up 7 percent on the year-ago period. Consolidated ARPU per customer
relationship increased 21 percent to $44.88.

—By Mansha Daswani