Virgin Media produced $403.1 million in revenue in...
Virgin Media produced $403.1 million in revenue in its first 23 days under Liberty Global ownership, due partly to its TiVo-based services’ net addition of 155,000 subscribers, Liberty officials said Friday on a conference call. Liberty, which completed its purchase…
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of U.K.-based Virgin in June, is “still working on synergies” between the companies, but they will be larger financial-wise than forecast when the deal was announced in February, Liberty CEO Michael Fries said. There were “revenue synergies, cost efficiencies on the Liberty side” and others discovered “once we got inside the tent to get more exposure to the moving parts,” Fries said, not providing additional details. Virgin ended Q2 with 1.7 million TiVo subscribers, having added 720,000 during the past year in the U.K., Liberty officials said. Virgin resells TiVo Premiere DVRs. Liberty also is moving to expand its wireless business across its European business, Fries said. About 16 percent of Virgin’s 4.8 million customers have a quad-play subscription that includes video, telephony and broadband in addition to wireless, Liberty said. Liberty also has wireless in Germany via Unity Media with 190,000 subscribers, and Chile with VTR with 140,100, Liberty said. Liberty ended Q2 with 24.5 million customers across 14 countries, including 21.9 million that received video, the company said. In addition to TiVo, Liberty is pushing to increase its Horizon TV service that had 270,000 subscribers as of June 30, including 185,000 in the Netherlands and 85,000 in Switzerland, where it operates UPC Cablecom, company officials said. Liberty picked up 70,000 Horizon customers in Q2. Liberty, which launched Horizon last fall, will expand it to Germany and Ireland this fall, company officials said. Horizon TV is Liberty’s answer to TV Everywhere, allowing subscribers to share content across devices with a common interface and recommendation engine. Liberty officials conceded the initial launch in Switzerland suffered some operational issues, many of which have been resolved by a “code drop” that enabled faster navigation and a more “simplified menu structure,” said Diederik Karsten, executive vice president-European broadband operations. There also will be a new iPad application released this fall, company officials said. The Horizon set-top, made by Samsung with an NDS interface, features an Intel Puma processor, 1 GB RAM, 256 MB flash memory, six DVB-C tuners and a 500 GB hard drive. It also has two Wi-Fi chips, one for local area network connectivity and another for HD content, and Multimedia over Coax 1.1. The recommendation engine was designed by ThinkAnalytics. Liberty’s Q2 net income narrowed to $8.7 million from $706.8 million a year earlier when it benefited from the sale of Australian telecom Austar to Foxtel. Liberty’s Q2 revenue rose to $3.16 billion from $2.52 billion, benefitting from increases in sales in Germany to $624.6 million from $566 million, and Belgium, $534.4 million from $466.2 million, the company said. In addition to sales, Liberty’s acquisition of Virgin added $13 million in debt and $370 million in capital lease obligations.