Virgin Media Releases Q3 Results

LONDON,
November 6: Announcing its third-quarter results today, British cable platform
Virgin Media revealed that it will pay BSkyB a license fee of £30 million per
year for carriage of the Sky basic channels, rising to up to £38 million
subject to performance targets.

The
first year of the deal calls for a capped performance-based additional fee of
£6 million, while the second year includes an £8 million adjustment. In the
final seven months of the term, the adjustment is £7.9 million. The same terms
apply for the carriage of the Virgin Media Television portfolio of channels on
Sky. Virgin Media stated this deal will bring in at least £24 million in
increased payments per year.

Terms
of the recently signed carriage deal were revealed as part of the cable
platform's third-quarter results. Revenues for the period fell slightly to
£991.1 million, while net loss increased from £61 million to £120.8 million.
Cable revenues were steady at £763.7 million, while mobile revenues fell to
£145.5 million and content revenues were up to £81.9 million. The platform
ended the period with 3.6 million cable subscribers.

Neil
Berkett, the CEO of Virgin Media, said: "These third-quarter results
represent another solid operational and financial performance as we continue to
execute against our strategy. In particular, we have grown ARPU, churn remains
lower than a year ago and our customers are buying more products from us than
ever before. In the face of a slowdown in the general economy, our business has
shown good resilience and we are focused on keeping churn low, improving our
operational execution and driving unnecessary costs and inefficiencies out of
the business. We continue to exploit our competitive advantages in leading next
generation broadband in the U.K. and redefining the on-demand TV experience.
Our fourth quarter will mark a major milestone as we launch our unrivalled 50Mb
broadband service."

—By
Mansha Daswani