Revenues at UPC Ireland, owner of NTL and Chorus, rose sharply in the three months to the end of September in spite of a reduction of 1,200 in its television subscriber base.
Figures released yesterday by Liberty Global, UPC's Colorado-based parent, show that the Irish company's revenues rose by 14 per cent year on year, to $75.9 million (€51.7 million) from $66.6 million.
The dollar's recent weakness against the euro inflates UPC's actual revenue growth. In euro terms, the growth rate was 5.7 per cent during the period.
In the nine months to the end of September, UPC's revenues rose by 16.2 per cent, to $224.3 million from $193.1 million. The growth rate in euro terms was 7.6 per cent.
UPC said its operating profit before exceptionals for the three-month period rose to $23.7 million from $18.8 million. In the nine months to the end of September, the operating profit was $70.4 million, up from $57.8 million a year earlier.
UPC had 585,000 television subscribers at the end of September, a reduction of 1,200 when compared with the three months to the end of June and down 7,200 on a year earlier.
UPC is the biggest provider of subscription television in Ireland, ahead of Sky, which has 513,000 satellite customers here.
In terms of television, 256,500 were analogue customers, 107,800 had MMDS and 220,700 used its digital cable service.
UPC had a total of 312,500 digital customers on cable and MMDS, up 13.8 per cent on September 2006. This indicates the firm's success in migrating customers from its analogue service.
UPC had 73,600 broadband subscribers at the end of September, compared with 67,000 at the end of June and 48,200 a year earlier. This puts it neck and neck with BT Ireland as the second-largest broadband provider behind Eircom.
UPC also had 7,800 telephone subscribers, up from 5,100 at the end of June and just 300 at the end of September 2006.
It said 153,300 homes were now wired up to receive its telephone service while 383,700 could get the broadband service.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)