UPC revenues climb 3.7% in first quarter

REVENUES AT UPC Ireland grew by 3.7 per cent on a constant currency basis to €61.1 million for the first quarter in spite of a decline in customer numbers.

Overall customer numbers in the three months to the end of March declined 5,200 to 540,000 compared with the previous quarter, according to results published by the cable TV and telecoms provider that owns NTL and Chorus.

UPC said it had 111,400 broadband subscribers at the end of March, an increase of 9,500 compared with the final quarter of 2008. It is the second-largest broadband provider behind Eircom. The number of UPC phone customers grew by 7,000, or 25 per cent, to 34,800 over the period.

A decline in analogue cable television subscriptions was the main reason for the decline in overall customers.

Robert Dunn, chief executive of UPC Ireland, said revenue growth this year was unlikely to be as high as 2008, when it reached 7.9 per cent. He said the company was seeing little negative impact from the economic downturn and that the sharp increase in phone customers was in part due to consumers becoming more price-conscious.

“The take-up rate for our telephone service has grown strongly over the last six months and grown again in the month of April. We think that is because people are looking to how they can save money.”

Mr Dunn added UPC was on target to be able to offer 120Mbits/sec broadband speeds by the start of 2010. He said the new RTÉ catch-up online service – that allows users to watch recently broadcast TV programmes – would be enhanced by the higher bandwidth. “A high broadband speeds fixed-line connection is exactly how you want to be looking at these video streaming services. A lot of the time you are not getting the quality connection on your mobile to really use these services.”

He said the company had also recently completed a card swap for set-top boxes on the NTL network to counter “pirate” systems. A “significant” rise in subscriptions to premium services had followed the completion of the card swap in March.

Results published yesterday by Colorado-based Liberty Global, UPC’s listed parent company, show UPC’s operating cash flow, a measure of profits, fell over 9 per cent to $30.8 million. On a constant currency basis, this equated to an increase of 4.4 per cent to €23.6 million.