Virgin Media Adds 154,000 Premises to UK Ultrafast Network UPDATE

Cable ISP Virgin Media UK (Liberty Global) has published their Q4 2019 results, which reveals that their “gigabit capable” broadband and TV network was extended to another 154,000 premises in the quarter (up from 119K in Q3) and their total broadband base now stands at 5,271,000 (up by 1.9K in Q4 vs 2.4K in Q3).

The main development for Virgin Media since the last update has been the on-going expansion of their 1Gbps (Gig1Fibre) capable DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade (here), which has now reached Reading (inc. surrounding areas), Greater Manchester, Southampton and is due to cover their entire network by 2021. The operator also opened a new HQ building in Reading and they gave those on slower packages a free upgrade to 108Mbps (here).

Outside of that there hasn’t been much to report in the last quarter and we continue to await news of Liberty Global’s ambition to establish a new alternative network (Liberty Networks) in the UK, which could potentially serve the UK’s other 10 million premises – outside of Virgin Media’s existing network area (here) – with FTTP. In keeping with that we’re also waiting to see if Virgin Media opens their existing network up to wholesale access (here).

Sadly today’s results didn’t include any major surprises, but in terms of their latest customer figures the results are as follows.

VM UK Customer Figures for Q4 2019
5,271,000 Internet – (up from 5,269,100 in Q3)
4,605,500 Phone / VoIP – (down from 4,633,600)
3,179,500 Mobile – (up from 3,137,000)
3,687,400 Video / TV – (down from 3,765,000)

Meanwhile today’s results reveal that the pace of their Project Lightning network expansion, which originally aimed to add 4 million extra premises by the end of 2020 (2 million via FTTP), has increased a little during the quarter (Q4 is generally always a strong one). Overall they added 154,000 extra premises to their UK network coverage (up from 119K in the previous quarter) and this makes for a total of 2.1 million UK premises since 2015/16.

As it stands Virgin Media has contracts that will see their build continue until at least 2023 (here) and so at the very least they’re not in a rush to reach the original 17 million premises target.

Project Lightning Rollout Since 2017
Q4 2019 = 154,000 Premises
Q3 2019 = 119,000 Premises
Q2 2019 = 130,000 Premises
Q1 2019 = 102,000 Premises
Q4 2018 = 144,000 Premises
Q3 2018 = 109,000 Premises
Q2 2018 = 118,000 Premises
Q1 2018 = 111,000 Premises (likely impacted by heavy snow)
Q4 2017 = 159,000 Premises
Q3 2017 = 147,000 Premises
Q2 2017 = 127,000 Premises
Q1 2017 = 102,000 Premises

NOTE: Q1 is traditionally a slower quarter for build due to various issues (weather, holidays etc.). The last cumulative cost per premises estimate was c.£690 (just the build costs would be £660) and this was achieving 30-35% penetration after 3 years. Virgin’s UK network currently covers a total of 14,894,400 homes.

On the financial front Virgin Media reported quarterly revenue of £1,331.7m (up from £1,281.7m in the previous quarter), although as above they’re clearly still struggling to add new customers and this is likely to be a concern for the operator given their current roll-out programme. On the other hand their new Project Lightning build areas seem to be the ones generating new customers, which is a positive indicator.

Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, said:

“2019 was a transformational year on many fronts. In July, we sold our operations in Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic to Vodafone for over $21 billion. We are now geographically concentrated in five attractive Western European markets, while enjoying substantial financial firepower with over $11 billion of total liquidity.

Technologically, we continued to push the boundaries of our fiber-rich HFC networks by accelerating our gigabit broadband rollouts to more European homes and businesses. As a result, millions of our customers currently have access to 1 gigabit download speeds, far surpassing what our competitors are able to offer across the vast majority of our footprint.

In the U.K., our largest market, our focus on fixed-mobile convergence drove record mobile subscription growth in 2019. Last fall, we announced a transformational MVNO deal with Vodafone, which will allow Virgin Media to launch 5G mobile speeds. Combined with our fixed-line gigabit broadband speeds, our cutting-edge FMC bundles place us in an enviable position as we continue to extend the reach of our network with Project Lightning.

And while we expect some unavoidable headwinds in 2020, we believe the medium-term outlook in the U.K. remains attractive, especially as we evaluate strategic options for value creation. From a leadership perspective, we recently appointed Severina Pascu as CFO and Deputy CEO of Virgin Media, and expect her depth of operating expertise to make a significant impact over the coming years.”

The brief mention of how Liberty Global continues to “evaluate strategic options for value creation” (in the UK) means that they have yet to reach a final agreement on their plans for Liberty Networks. At this stage it’s unclear what the hold-up is, although attempts to get Sky (Sky Broadband) on-board as an ISP partner appear to still be on-going.

UPDATE 14th Feb 2020 – 2:33pm

Liberty Global has this afternoon published a copy of the presentation that they used after the results were released, which sets out – we think for the first time in an official capacity – what they’re exploring for their future network strategy with respect to Liberty Networks. Broadly it’s the same as we’ve been reporting for the past few months but it’s nice to have them confirm that.

On top of that we also got some updated details about the strong take-up in Project Lightning areas and the related cost per premises coming down.