TDC hit by TV losses in competitive market

Danish telco and cable operator TDC lost TV subscribers in the year to September and saw its TV profits decline sharply. 

The operator had 987,000 TV subscribers at the end of the period, down 20,000 year on year. Gross profit from TV declined by 12.8% due to the inclusion SVOD services in its TV packages, higher content costs and investment in its own content line-up. 

On the positive side, Nuuday, TDC’s service provider arm struck three new strategic partnership with TV2, Nordic Film and C More to bring more content to its offering, but the company failed to strike a renewal deal with Discovery. 

The decline in TV customers along with lower mobile handset sales had a negative impact on TDC’s consemer revenue, which fell by 0.5% to DKK8.2 billion (€1.1 billion) for the first nine months. The decline in subs was partly offset by increases in price across broadband,TV and mobile voice. 

TDC’s overall gross profit fell by 2.3% to DKK5.75 billion due to lower landline voice revenues and increased TV content costs.