ISP TalkTalk UK Falls to 4.043m Broadband Users as Fibre Connections Double

Budget internet, tv and phone provider TalkTalk has today released its latest Q3-2012 financial results, which reveal that their broadband subscriber base declined by -4,000 in the quarter to total 4,043,000 (that’s a big improvement from the -19k lost in Q2). Thankfully superfast broadband (FTTC) customers doubled to 30,000.

Meanwhile the ISPs new YouView (IPTV) based TV service, which only went live a couple of months ago, has already been installed in 29,000 homes (new customers are allegedly being connected at a rate of 1,000 every day). Apparently the “feedback from early adopters has been excellent“, which is good because TalkTalk need TV to help hold onto their customers.

The vast majority (94%) of TalkTalk’s customers use its cheaper unbundled (LLU) broadband and phone platform and just 239,000 appear to use their older and more expensive BT-based broadband service (these customers are usually outside of the ISPs LLU footprint). Similarly they’ve unbundled a total of 2,695 telephone exchanges from BT (i.e. adding an extra 104 in the quarter), which means the LLU network now covers 94% of the UK population.

Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk, said:

“These results show real trading momentum and are a strong platform from which to build towards our medium term growth targets. We have successfully launched our TV proposition and have installed 29,000 customers to date. Customer feedback has been positive and we are growing the base according to plan, at 1,000 per day.

Meanwhile, our mobile handset proposition is growing meaningfully in the contract handset market. The demand we are seeing for additional products from our increasingly profitable and stable customer base, the progress we are making in TalkTalk Business, and the savings we expect from the next phase of simplifying the business, underpin our confidence in delivering our targeted 2% CAGR in revenues and 25% EBITDA margin in the medium term.”

TalkTalk said that it expects to unbundle a further 300 exchanges over the next year. The statement added that “[TalkTalk] now see an opportunity to extend the programme beyond that as the cost of unbundling exchanges falls and customer ARPU grows, allowing us to profitably extend our geographic reach.”

On top of that the ISP similarly expects “overall fibre [FTTC] demand among our customer base to remain modest until the value for money benefits become clearer and the installation process simpler” (i.e. it needs to be cheaper and easier to setup).

Total revenue for TalkTalk stood at £828m, with underlying EBITDA of £155m.