Virgin Media content revenue rises £7.5m

LONDON - Virgin Media's content arm, home to Living owner Virgin Media TV, increased revenue to £42.3m in Q2, although its ad revenue fell.

Virgin Media: content revenue increased in Q2
Virgin Media: content revenue increased in Q2

Unveiling its Q2 2009 results, Virgin Media would not break out VMtv's absolute ad revenue or the percentage change year on year.

However, as a whole, Virgin Media's content division, which does not include its 50% share in UKTV, increased revenue from £34.8m in Q2 2008 to £42.3m in Q2 this year.

Virgin Media said VMtv revenue increased mainly due to growth in subscription revenue, partially offset by the reduced advertising revenue.

Subscription revenue increased year-on-year due to its carriage agreement with BSkyB for continued carriage of VMtv channels on its satellite platform.

Virgin Media owns 50% of the companies that comprise UKTV, a group of joint ventures formed with BBC Worldwide. Virgin Media said its share of UKTV's pre-tax profit was £400,000 in the quarter, down from £5m in Q2 2008. It declined to detail the reasons for this decline.

Across the Virgin Media group, total revenue was £936m, down from £940m in Q2 2008.

It ended Q2 with 3.67 million digital TV subscribers, up from 3.53 million a year earlier. It signed up 20,400 new digital TV customers in the quarter, compared with 24,800 a year earlier.

Video-on-demand usage rose to 55% of digital customers, up from 48% in Q2 2008. And ARPU, the average amount of revenue earned from each customer directly connected to its telephony, internet and TV network, increased 3.8% to £43.27. BSkyB does not break out a monthly average ARPU figure, but its annual figure at the end of Q2 2009 was £464.

Triple-play penetration, the proportion of customers taking its voice, internet and TV customers, stood at 58.3%, up from 53.1% in Q2 2008.

Meanwhile, it said it is investigating the benefits of obtaining a secondary stock listing on the London Stock Exchange, in addition to its New York Stock Exchange listing. It said such a listing would provide a "further means for UK and European investors to trade the company's shares".

 

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