Virgin Media has announced financial results for the final quarter of 2011 and for the full year.
Revenue was up 3% to £4 billion for the year, while annual operating income was up 67.8% to £540 million. The company revealed its first annual profit with net income of £76m for the year.
The number of UK mobile ‘pay monthly’ contract customers up was 26% in the year to 1.52 million, while the prepay customer base dropped 19% to 1.51 million. It means the company now has more contract customers than prepay customers for the first time ever.
Full year mobile revenue was £552.9 million, down 1.3% year-on-year, with part of this drop blamed on mobile termination rate changes.
Around 15% of Virgin Media’s cable customer base currently has at least one Virgin Mobile contract. When prepay phones are added to the equation, the company estimates that around 20% of its cable base has a Virgin mobile phone. Quad-play penetration - where a household takes broadband, phone and cable TV products plus at least one mobile phone - increased to around 697,000 households (14.5% of the customer base).
Neil Berkett, Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Media, said “In a fast-changing industry and an uncertain economic environment, our 2011 results demonstrate the underlying resilience of Virgin Media's business model, with modest revenue growth driving robust OCF and record free cash flow. Our next accelerated stock repurchase of $250 million shows our ability and commitment to translate the cash generative characteristics of our business into shareholder value.”