Revenue bounce for Virgin Media Ireland despite dip in TV subscribers

Revenues at Virgin Media Ireland rose by 11.6 per cent to €109 million in the first three months of the year, with the company saying it ended the quarter with 1.06 million cable and mobile subscriptions.

The latest figures from Virgin, which acquired TV3 in December 2015 in an €87 million deal, include broadcast revenues.

For the same period a year earlier, turnover totalled €98.2 million.

The number of television subscribers the group has continued to decline during the quarter, slipping to 273,800, down almost 19,000 versus the final three months of 2017.

Vodafone to pay €18.4bn for Liberty assets to strengthen European presence

---

‘New York Times’ adds more subscribers

---

RTÉ struggling with ‘unsustainable dominance’, says TV3

---

RTÉ plans plus-one channel for RTÉ2

---

Virgin stressed this figure includes a reclassification of 14,500 SME customers who were moved into the business segment in the company’s reporting.

The number of broadband subscribers at Virgin rose by just 400 over the same period to 372,600.

Virgin, which began offering mobile services to customers in October 2015 under a mobile virtual network operator agreement with Three Ireland, said it had 59,900 mobile subscribers at the end of the quarter.

The company, whose parent Liberty Global earlier this week confirmed it was to sell some of its European operations to Vodafone in a deal worth €18.4 billion, said first quarter growth was underpinned by a strong performance from mobile and business customers, TV3 Group and as a result of its ongoing network expansion investment.

Finance director Ewan Dunbar said TV3 delivered "a very strong performance" in the first quarter with a 15 per cent year-on-year increase in channel viewership and strong growth in advertising revenue..

The company's parent, which is owned by Irish American businessman John Malone on Wednesday reported its strongest quarterly revenue growth in nearly five years as revenues rose by 4.2 per cent to $4.2 billion and operating income climbed 17.5 per cent year-on-year to $493.1 million.