Cable operator records €9.1m profit
The division generated revenues of €26.9m during the quarter, which was 2.7% more than last year.
NTL, which provides a range of cable TV, telephone and internet services to customers in Dublin, Galway and Waterford, said better margins, cost efficiencies and fewer unpaid customer bills were behind the improvement in revenues generated.
NTL Ireland managing director Graham Sutherland said the division continued to deliver “significant improvements” and was well placed to offer more to its residential and business customers.
The company plans to target 100,000 of its customers before the end of the year with a new broadband internet access product.
NTL had a total of 82,000 subscribers to its digital TV service at the end of June, but 17,000 of these came from NTL’s programme to switch over all of its customers using microwave-based MMDS technology to the new service.
Excluding MMDS customers, NTL added approximately 7,000 new digital customers in the first six months of the year, which was broadly in line with last year’s performance.
Digital customers are considered important by industry analysts as they tend to subscribe to more channels than those on traditional analogue services, and generate more revenue for TV operators as a result.
NTL had 259,000 analogue customers at the end of June, almost 10,000 fewer than in January as some customers migrated to digital and others were disconnected as part of a get-tough policy on unpaid bills.
The NTL group, which provides most of its services in Britain, said total second quarter revenues were stg£584.4 million (€876.6m), 6% higher than the same period last year.
The group recorded a minor operating loss of stg£7m, which was an improvement on the second quarter of 2003, when a stg£51m loss was posted, but the results disappointed analysts after the group reached breakeven earlier this year.
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