Numericable sees strong multi-play growth

French cable operator Numericable now has over one million multi-play customers and a total customer base of 1.7 million.

In its first full-year results since becoming a public company, the operators said its base of multi-play customers now stands at 1.041 million, up 7% year-on-year, with overall customers rising 5% to 1.709 million.

Numericable said it now had 300,000 LaBox Fibre customers, up two and a half times in a year.

Numericable said that it had managed to grow its overall base despite a fall in the number of analogue TV only customers, and that it was on track to meet its objective of increasing its overall base by between 200,000 and 250,000 over the next two years.

ARPU was up 2.7% to EUR41.90 for the year.

Numericable’s high-speed fibre network now passes 5.196 million homes, up 8.5%, out of an overall triple-play footprint of 8.5 million homes. Numericable has set an objective of passing all 8.5 million triple-play homes – 85% of its total base – with fibre by 2016.

Revenue was up 0.9% to EUR1.314 billion, which the company said was in line with objectives set at the time of its flotation, with residential services revenue up 4.7% to EUR865 million. EBITDA was down half a percentage point to EUR616 million, which the company said was due to a 23% increase in costs associated with the boost in acquisition of new customers.

Separately, Numericable controlling shareholder Patrick Drahi, owner of Altice, has told Les Echos newspaper that he is sticking with his deadline of Friday for Vivendi to accept or reject his offer for SFR. Drahi told the paper that the future of telecoms was “the convergence of fixed and mobile and not the merger of declining mobile operators”.