Virgin Media revenues up by 7%

Virgin Media has increased its revenues by 7.1% to £964 million, for the three months to June – traditionally the company’s weakest quarter for growth.

The company has added 9,100 new households to its cable subscription base, compared to 27,800 losses a year ago. This is the first time the company has added subscribers in the second quarter since the merger of NTL and Telewest, which was over four years ago.

Virgin also added 25,900 TV customers, and HD customers increased by 79.7% year-on-year, bringing the total number to 1.2 million subscribers. However, 3,600 analogue customers were disconnected.

They also saw improved performance in their mobile and business sections, which increased their revenue by £4.4 million and £12.8 million respectively. The company added 66,300 Virgin Mobile contract customers, and the rate at which customers leave to rival services was a low 1.3%.

28,100 new broadband customers also subscribed, meaning a total of 4.21 million people now use Virgin Media broadband. Out of these, over 650,000 customers subscribe to the 20Mbps and 50Mbps services; a year-on-year increase of 43%.

“This performance was driven by our ability to offer households and businesses an increasingly differentiated range of digital services,” said Neil Berkett, Virgin Media chief executive. “Going forward, we’ll continue to differentiate our propositions by proactively exploiting the advantages of our network and our mobile capability.”

Virgin Media also said that it would now look to return £700 million to debt holders and shareholders.

“Confidence in our long-term ability to deliver strong free cash flow, along with the recent completion of our refinancing, enables us to announce today an initial capital return programme that complements our existing debt reduction schedule, without compromising our ability to make further strategic investments in the business,” Berkett added.

This follows Virgin Media’s 2.9% revenue increase in the first quarter of 2010.