Unitymedia revenues grow 10%, EBTIDA up 9%

Liberty Global subsidiary and German cable network operator Unitymedia revenues for the fourth quarter of EUR 242 million, growing by 10 percent year-on-year. The growth was driven an increase in revenue from advanced services, in particular from the continued take-up of the Unity3play product bundles, other digital and HD video and broadband services as well as the 1 January 2010 price increase in selected segments of the multi-dwelling unit video customer base. The adjusted EBITDA for the same period increased by 9 percent to EUR 135.4 million and the capex increased by 8 percent to 75.5 million. This leads to an EBITDA margin of 55.9 percent down 7 percentage points compared with the same period in 2009. Key drivers for the capex increase were higher expenditures for CPE following the takeup of new HD services, increased in-home wiring upgrade costs related to broadband and HD installations and expenditures relating to upgrading the network for EuroDocsis 3.0 capability, partially offset by a lower level of network backbone two-way upgrades. Unitymedia has upgraded its two way network to 94 percent of all connected households and 81 percent of the two-way network is also upgraded with EuroDocsis 3.0. Unitymedia's total RGUs grew by 6 percent to 6.048 million at the end of 2010, with 95,500 additions during the fourth quarter. The analogue TV customer base decreased by 7 percent year-on-year to 2.954 million, while the digital TV customer base grew by 13 percent to 1.534 million, leading to a 1 percent drop in TV customers. At the same time, the number of broadband customers grew 33 percent to 780,300 and the number of telephony customers increased by 33 percent to 779,300 on 31 December 2010.