Origin Broadband UK Left Netgem with GBP422K in Unpaid Invoices

Pay TV solutions provider Netgem this week reported that the decision by Origin Broadband UK to appoint an administrator (here), which came after the ISP struggled to tackle over £20m in losses, resulted in the TV firm taking the decision to “write-off” some £422,000 (500,000 Euros) worth of “unpaid invoices“.

Just to recap. Origin Broadband became a distributor of Netgem’s IPTV platform back in mid-2020, which enabled the ISP to develop a limited broadband and TV bundle for some of their customers. But the latest situation offers a practical example of just how damaging Origin’s money struggles have been to some of the other companies in their supply chain.

In the end, the ownership of Origin Broadband ended up being swapped to a company called OB Telecom Limited, which is now trading as Origin Broadband but owned by TalkTalk. “TalkTalk Group has acquired 100% of the share capital of the newly formed OB Telecom, which will continue to operate as a standalone business,” said Origin’s spokesperson last month.

Extract from Netgem’s Q3 2021 Report

Over the past quarter, the English operator Origin, a customer of the Group, suddenly placed itself under the protection of an administrator. In this context, and out of prudence, Netgem has taken the decision not to recognize 500 K€ of turnover corresponding to unpaid invoices related to revenues from the TV customer base and associated services until the end of September.

As Origin’s customer base was acquired by TalkTalk in October, Origin’s former NetgemTV subscribers will be billed by Netgem to TalkTalk in the future.

As hinted above, TalkTalk recently signed a partnership with Netgem TV (here), which among other things means that existing customers will continue to be supported even if Netgem might not get everything it is owned by Origin’s previous owners.

“Despite this, and strong inflation of hardware component costs, we have delivered a double-digit growth of our Gross Margin YoY, and are confident about our growth perspectives in the UK,” said a spokesperson for Netgem to ISPreview.co.uk.