Ziggo sees strong digital growth thanks to bundled offerings

Dutch cable operator Ziggo has posted strong digital subscriber and revenue growth on the back of its pre-summer campaign for its bundled offering and the launch of a new TV proposition including more HD channels.

Ziggo grew its digital TV subscriber base by 130,000 in the third quarter to 944,000, taking penetration of digital TV to 70% of its subscriber base. Its bundled All-in-1 offering boosted fixed telephony subscribers by 59,000, giving it 1.311 million telephony customers in total, and the company recorded the highest quarterly growth in broadband subscribers – 39,000 – since it was created in its present form in 2007, taking its total to 1.643 million. Total RGUs numbered 6.919 million, up 5.1%. Total customers, including analogue subscribers, fell by 2.5% to 3.021 million.

Ziggo posted revenues of €375.6 million, up 9.7% year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA was €210 million, up 5.5%.
Free operating cash flow grew slightly year-on-year, and the company’s debt-to-EBITDA ratio fell from 4.5 to 3.98 in the first nine months of this year.

The company said it expected further revenue growth for the remainder of the year, with operating costs rising slightly as the company continued to invest in marketing and sales.

“As anticipated, we experienced a very busy summer that started with successful marketing campaigns in June and July driving the addition of many new bundle customers,” said Bernard Dijkuizen, CEO. “These campaigns have resulted in strong third quarter market share gains in triple play, internet, telephony and B2B. We also successfully introduced our new TV proposition early September and migrated more than three million TV customers to our new TV proposition.”