Virgin Media's prospects for a secondary listing on the London
Stock Exchange improved as it turned a year on year loss into a
profit for its second quarter as average revenue per user grew
nearly 4%.
Total sales were down slightly on the same quarter the year
before, from £940m to £936m, level with the previous quarter.
Operating income rose from a loss of £328m the year before, to
£15m. Net cash flow from operations was down on the year before,
from £274m to £236m.
Customer churn was steady at 1.3% and customers were buying more
from the firm. Some 95,700 more were buying their residential
broadband, TV, telephony and contract mobile services from Virgin
Media, and almost 60% were on triple-play deals.
The firm said 86% of broadband customers were now on 10Mbps or
faster service. The roll-out of a 50Mbps service was complete and
the firm was pilot-testing a 200Mbps service.
TV customers rose 20,400 to 3.67 million. Fifty five percent
used the video on demand service to push downloads to a record
average of 62 million a month.
The number of mobile phone customers rose 60% year on year to
784,600.
CEO Neil Berkett said prospects for the second half of the year
remained strong. He said the completion of its next generation
network was a landmark.
"More than 12 million homes now have access to 50Mbps broadband,
the fastest commercially available product in the UK, and we
continue to innovate with our customer pilot of 200Mbps," he
said.