Virgin Media’s content business sees Q4 revenue increase
Virgin Media’s content business recorded revenues of £118.8 million in the three months to the end of December, up from £114.1 million a year previously.
Ad revenue at the content arm, which houses Virgin Media TV, its 50% share in UKTV, and shopping broadcaster Sit Up TV, was up 10% year on year.
It was reported yesterday that Virgin Media could begin the sale of its content division within the next few weeks (see Virgin Media could sell content division in next few weeks).
Virgin Media’s ‘on-net’ customer base at the end of December was 4.76 million with net additions of 14,800 in the quarter.
Average revenue per user grew to £42.30 per month, from £42.24 in the previous year.
Virgin Media gained 57,100 broadband customers, down from 68,700 in the previous quarter and 106,200 in the previous year taking it to 3.68 million.
It also added a net 44,500 TV customers, down from 61,100 last year, while 1.8 million of its digital TV customers are now using video on demand.
In December, the cable company’s customers made 53 million video on demand requests, taking total views in 2008 to 516 million.
While the company gained 70,800 mobile contract users, taking it to 649,400, it shed 224,000 pre-pay users on Virgin Mobile.
Neil Berkett, chief executive officer of Virgin Media, said: “Record numbers of customers are now using Virgin Media’s services, despite the current economic environment. We are successfully giving people more reasons to choose us and they are buying more products from us than ever before, with 56% of our customers now buying three services or more.
“Since its launch in December the consumer response to our next generation 50Mb broadband service has been encouraging and helped reinforce our position as the UK’s leading residential broadband provider.
“We have also extended our lead in the video-on-demand and catch-up TV markets, which we believe to be valuable services in retaining customers and attracting prospects to Virgin Media. Over the course of 2008 we received more than half a billion views as on-demand TV came of age.”