NOS increases pay TV base and sees five-year record RGU growth

Portuguese pay TV providers and fixed-line service provider NOS has turned in a strong third quarter on the operational front, with an additional 146,900 RGUs enabling it to claim the greatest RGU growth in the telecom segment for the last five years.

NOS also managed to grow its pay TV base, albeit modestly, with 12,100 new fixed line pay TV subs offsetting lost satellite customers, leading to a net increase of 0.1% year-on-year. The company has 1.644 million pay TV customers.

NOS added 125,000 new mobile customers, including 78,100 contract customers, accounting for the bulk of RGU growth. It added 12,000 new convergent customers, meaning that convergent customers now account for 63.8% of fixed-line customers, with a net increase of 85,800 convergent RGUs taking its total to 5.146 million.

NOS upgraded its UMA TV offering in August with new features including the integration of Netflix and Amazon Prime. It also launched a 10GB mobile data offer as part of the launch of its new NOS TV mobile app, which has been downloaded 1.4 million times since the original version launched in 2016.

NOS’s overall revenues were up 5.6% to €366.5 million. Consolidated EBITDA was up 6.6% to €160.6 million for the quarter.