Com Hem sees strong TiVo growth

Swedish cable operator Com Hem’s TiVo advanced TV user base now stands at over a fifth of its TV base, with the company adding 30,000 in the quarter to September to take its TiVo total to 132,000. 

Com Hem posted solid third quarter results on the back of a generally strong operational performance, with its subscriber base growing by 15,000 to 861,000 and its digital TV base growing by 8,000 to 607,000.

Broadband subscribers increased by 17,000 to 594,000 revenue generating units, while the fixed telephony base grew for the first quarter since 2011 by 3,000 RGUs and churn declined from 16.4% in the prior quarter to 14.8% in the third quarter.

Com Hem’s revenue for the quarter stood at SEK1.21 billion (€130 million), up 9.6% year-on-year, while underlying EBITDA stood at SEK576 million, up 1.1%. The operator turned in a net profit of SEK7 million excluding one-off costs associated with its IPO, against a loss of SEK82 million last year.

“The third quarter demonstrates that we continue delivering on our growth strategy. All key metrics show significant progress. Total revenue was up almost 10% compared with the corresponding quarter last year, with consumer revenue rising by 5% – on the back of our sales momentum, lower churn and higher consumer ARPU,” said CEO Anders Nilsson.

“Broadband has been our key focus during the quarter as we upgraded a significant proportion of our customer base and strengthened our market proposition, raising our minimum entry level speed to 50Mpbs – five times faster than the competition – and making it more attractive for customers to upgrade to higher speeds. These changes were supported by significant marketing activity and resulted in an all-time high number, since 2007, of 17,000 net additions to our broadband subscriber base in the quarter combined with a material improvement in the proportion of new customers choosing 100Mbps and above.”