ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Liberty Global, Inc. (“Liberty Global,” “LGI,” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ:LBTYA - News) (NASDAQ:LBTYB - News) (NASDAQ:LBTYK - News), today announces financial and operating results for the third quarter (“Q3”) ended September 30, 2008. Highlights for the quarter compared to the results for the same period last year (unless noted), include: Revenue increased to $2.65 billion from $2.26 billion, reflecting reported and rebased1 growth of 17% and 6%, respectively Operating Cash Flow (“OCF”)2 increased to $1.17 billion from $918 million, reflecting 27% reported growth and 13% rebased growth OCF margin3 expanded to 44.1% in Q3 from 40.7% Total RGU4 additions of 441,000 in Q3, including 214,000 organic RGU additions Net loss of $309 million as compared to net earnings of $40 million, as last year’s third quarter results included a gain on disposition of assets of $553 million Free Cash Flow (“FCF”)5 generation of $100 million in Q3 ‘08 and $545 million YTD ’08 Repurchased approximately 18 million common shares since August 1, 2008President and CEO Mike Fries said, “We remain focused on driving penetration of advanced video and broadband services and on managing our cost structure and capital spending. As a result, customer ARPUs6 are up approximately 10% in Europe and our penetrations and bundling ratios continue to reach new highs. We also delivered rebased OCF growth of 14% and free cash flow growth of 143% on a year-to-date basis. Setting aside challenging competitive conditions in certain areas, we believe our results reflect the relative stability inherent in our subscription-based business, which has historically been resilient to difficult economic conditions.”
“One of our key strengths is our geographic diversity, as our core cable operations span 15 different countries. Many of these operations are managing through these economic times well. Given the state of the credit markets, we also feel very good about our balance sheet, particularly in terms of our liquidity position, debt maturity profile, and exposures to interest rates and currencies. We have limited near-term debt amortizations, all of which we expect can be funded by free cash flow, and we are well-hedged against adverse currency movements. In addition, all of our major operations are generating positive free cash flow year-to-date. Of particular note, we had consolidated liquidity of $3.2 billion at September 30, consisting of $1.6 billion of unrestricted cash and $1.6 billion7 of aggregate revolver capacity. While we will be focused on maintaining increased liquidity going forward, we will also be opportunistic about how we deploy our capital. We are focused on taking advantage of the market dislocation in this environment for the benefit of our shareholders.”
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