Full Fibre Broadband Builder CityFibre Celebrate £100m UK Revenue
CityFibre, which is busy rolling out a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network across the UK, has today celebrated reaching the £100m in revenue milestone in 2023. The operator also confirmed that their network now covers 3.5 million premises (3.2m Ready for Service) and has 337,000 live customer connections.
In case anybody has forgotten, CityFibre currently still holds an ambition to deploy their full fibre broadband network to cover up to 8 million UK premises (funded by c.£2.4bn in equity and c.£4.9bn debt) – across over 285 cities, towns and villages (c.30% of the UK) – by the end of 2025 (here). As above, they’ve so far covered 3.5 million premises (3.2m RFS), which is up from 3.37m (3m RFS) at the last update on 13th December 2023.
However, it’s also fair to say that the operator has had a challenging year in other respects, not least due to suffering from a sizeable number of job losses (here) and the worrying number of build suspensions due to issues with contractors like Kier Group, Telec etc. (examples here, here). But today’s progress update is all about highlighting the positives and showing that they aren’t going to be stopped by current market challenges.
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In that sense, it’s noted that, during 2023, the performance of CityFibre’s 41 consumer ISP partners continued to improve, driving take-up on the network. Over 165,000 new customer connections were added in the last year, a major increase of 98% versus those delivered in 2022 and bringing their total live customer connections to over 337,000 (10.53% take-up vs RFS premises).
In Milton Keynes, CityFibre’s most mature market, where the build programme was completed in 2022, more than 30% of their covered homes have already chosen to move over to their FTTP network. The first areas served in the city have now achieved approximately 40% take-up and penetration continues to grow.
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:
“In spite of a challenging operating environment, CityFibre continues to go from strength to strength. During 2023, we generated over £100m in revenues, delivered our target of 1 million Ready For Service premises, and doubled take-up across our footprint. We look forward to building on this firm foundation and exploring opportunities to transform our expansion ambitions in 2024 and beyond.”
The operator now claims to have “confidence that the business will deliver EBITDA breakeven in H1 2024” and they expect to add another 1 million premises to their network coverage during 2024 (i.e. a total of 4.5m premises passed or 4.2m RFS by this time next year). However, much as we’ve previously discussed, the operator’s current rate of build would still leave them falling well short of that c.8 million premises target.
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CityFibre has previously expressed a desire to tackle some, or all, of this gap in build and coverage by being a force for consolidation. But being able to strike the right deals, with the right networks (i.e. those with little overlap), is rarely an easy task and only time will tell how much success they have on this front.
On the other hand, it’s worth taking a moment to ponder just how incredible it is for any alternative full fibre network in the UK to reach this scale, which has often involved CityFibre needing to build while in direct competition with established rivals like Virgin Media (VMO2), Openreach and others. Not an easy thing to do. The extra competition and energy this brings to the wider market is not something to be underestimated.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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The UK government should look at the UAE government’s ownership of Cityfibre, in the same way they do Vodafone, as posing a national security risk.
The UAE is not an enemy of the UK …
If it was then they would investigate football clubs first since more money is poured there
@Sam – No they’re not an enemy…At the moment.
Football clubs aren’t quite as sensitive as a communications network.
Football clubs have far more influence than an altnet
Why do you believe UAE will become an enemy of the UK? It could maybe make sense if you said funders of terrorism Iran or Pakistan, but the UAE literally just wants to be left alone
I see DF is still bitter at being made redundant by Cityfibre. As difficult as it might be, give up on the bitterness, it will make you a better person.
Proof that Ofcom’s regulation is working.
Positive news.Established competition for Openreach and especially Virgin Media is much needed.
Hopefully this means some of the paused builds will resume and more homes will get connected.
Yes indeed – we are still waiting, and there’s been zero news since the Kier suspension. They are terrible at communicating, but all I know is that we remain in a fibre desert from all the providers, despite all the surrounding/neighbouring exchanges being nearly covered now.
I presume that the revenue figure includes Entanet business leased lines and possibly Aquiss home broadband.
Otherwise, £100m revenue for 337K active customers equates to £24.73 per customer per month, which seems far too high for a wholesale service (given that Vodafone are retailing below that figure – and Openreach Equinox FTTP is under £17 at wholesale)
You’re assuming they’re all residential customers ? Because CF do other products (e.g. leased line, Three using them, etc.)
That’s what I mean: the £100m must surely include business leased lines, dark fibre etc. In which case, revenue from wholesale/residential FTTP is much lower.
Confirmed – they do sell business services, dark fibre and connections into mobile mast sites. A lot more than just FTTH connections on their infrastructure
We keep hearing about these consolidations that are going to happen but apart a bit of small scale stuff nothing seems to happen. CityFibre have publicly said they expect to be the principal consolidator but for the last couple of years but so far nothing significant. Fern or Community Fibre as possible targets perhaps? They have little presence in London so Community Fibre could be an obvious target. Or perhaps they are waiting for someone to go under and buy the assets cheap?
These things need to happen quickly because if our local situation is anything to go by Openreach are now 2.5 years ahead of anyone else, have 43% take up (in our street) and the altnet that has been building locally for the last year (Swish) have still not gone live although some movement finally seems to be happening. Didn’t anyone tell them that time is money?
You can’t make a judgement about the whole of the UK from the view point of your street.
Nobody is going to rush into an acquisition or merger unless they are desperate. They are probably waiting for a combination of right time and price. Due diligence can take many months so they don’t happen over night. The article published today by CF confirms there are active discussions taking place.
And for the record CF have take up in established areas of over 40% too, for example Milton Keynes.
Probably waiting for alt nets to fold. Buying up tiny little al nets is a lot of hassle that’s not really worth it. If they go bust they can be picked up very cheaply and without the debt etc
Are they looking for fresh financing, otherwise why put out a random update now? £100 million in revenue is pretty good, but meaningless in the absence of other figures.
I’m guessing the reported £100 Million figure is Underlying Revenue, rather than Statutory Revenue, but the press release doesn’t say.EBITDA alone is also meaningless in the absence of Capex, lease liabilities, debt interest, etc. To get a clearer picture, it’s worth looking at their accounts on the companies house website:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09759465
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07488363