Virgin Media O2 adds customers against ‘challenging backdrop’

Virgin Media O2, the UK Liberty Global-Telefónica joint venture, added 12,000 fixed network customers in Q3, along with 47,000 mobile contract customers.

Lutz Schüler

VMO2 added 115,000 fixed premises to its footprint as it reached three million Project Lightning premises and a total Gigabit network of 16 million homes.

Transaction-ajdusted Revenue stood at £2.588 million, down 0.6%, pushed down by a decline in handset revenue and consumer fixed revenue, which fell by 2% to £851 million due to what the company described as a change in the customer mix. Transaction adjusted EBITDA was up 8.6% to £991.2 million.

In a sign of the times, VMO2 did not break out TV numbers, but said it was achieving a “positive performance” from its recently-launched TV Stream product.

“This quarter has seen an increasingly challenging macroeconomic backdrop against which we continue to provide high speed and quality services whilst supporting our customers and people through these challenging times. Additionally, we accelerated our growth in profitability as our commercial momentum advanced and we continue to make strong progress on our three growth waves of expanding and upgrading our network, realisation of synergies and digitalising our business. Our converged offering combined with our improved understanding of our customer, through digitalisation, is underpinning our development and customer-value proposition,” said CEO Lutz Schüler.

“The third quarter has been one of strong strategic and operational progress supporting our delivery for the rest of the year and beyond. We have grown our mobile and fixed customer base, improved our product offering, hit a major convergence milestone and achieved another quarter of EBITDA growth. We reaffirm our 2022 guidance.”