Cable company NTL is looking forward to a strong, consolidatory year as its recent acquisition of rival group Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) starts to bear fruit. The company believes it is on target to achieve its 2001 financial targets of £2.6 billion in revenues and £385 million of EBITDA.
The group achieved record quarterly revenues of £586 million and total 2000 revenues of £1.9 billion and record quarterly EBITDA of £65 million, with total 2000 EBITDA of £229 million. However, the investment which NTL has made to put itself in a strong position for the future is sucking up money: pre-tax losses for the year came in at almost £3 billion.
| Financial Highlights |
|
|
|
|
| In £ millions |
YE-2000 |
YE-1999 |
Q4-2000 |
Q3-2000 |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Consumer |
£970 m |
£488m |
£321 m |
£305m |
| Business |
464m |
282m |
131 m |
126 m |
| Broadcast |
210 m |
183 m |
56 m |
54 m |
| Content |
10 m |
4m |
4 m |
2m |
| NTL Europe |
232m |
22 m |
74m |
73 m |
| REVENUES |
£1,886m |
£979m |
£586m |
£560m |
| |
|
|
|
|
| EBITDA |
£229m |
£130 m |
£65 m |
£62 m |
NTL now has 8.4 million cable homes passed in the UK, of which 2.8 million have active cable television accounts; 2.5 million homes take NTL’s telephony service. Since the acquisition of CWC in 1999, NTL has become the largest UK cable operator, behind Telewest Communications, the only other significant player.
Commenting on the results, chief executive Barclay Knapp, said: “2000 was a remarkable year for NTL. We completed the acquisition of CWC ConsumerCo in the UK and Cablecom in Switzerland, the two largest transactions in our company’s history. We have launched new products in all our major markets and we have been carrying out an extensive business review to reduce our cost base and ensure we’re fully exploiting the assets we have. Without doubt, the CWC ConsumerCo acquisition has presented us with the greatest management challenges due to the size of the transaction. However, after just a few months, we’ve been able to reduce churn significantly from 2.5% to 1.7% per month and add new customers by following the roadmap we created for past acquisitions.”
NTL believes it is now ready to compete effectively with the likes of BT and BSkyB in the telecommunications, internet and television markets. Much of the investment in infrastructure has now taken place and costs should start to reduce from here on.
