TalkTalk sees continued TV growth as new strategy boosts overall RGUs

TalkTalk’s YouView box

UK service provider TalkTalk added 82,000 net TV customers in its fourth fiscal quarter, taking its total to 1.4 million or 37% of the overall base.

TalkTalk said it had continued to “moderate” the pace of TV additions in the quarter as part of a broader strategy to drive growth across all its products, in contrast to its full-year 2014 strategy. The company said this had enabled it to dive broadband, fibre and mobile additions at lower subscriber acquisition costs. The company added over a million revenue-generating units in the course of the year, ending with 1.56 RGUs per customer, up 16% on the 2014 figure.

Total TV adds for the full year numbered 500,000. The company said that transactional VoD remained strong, and overall content revenues had growth by 34% year-on-year for the quarter.

The company said the addition of Blinkbox would enable it to accelerate the development of its TV service to drive greater engagement, higher ARPU and lower churn.

Customers watching and purchasing Sky boosts grew particularly strongly during the year, according to TalkTalk, with Sky Sports take-up growing 46% year on year driven by the success of Sky Sports F1 and the introduction of Sky Sports 5; and Sky Movies Boost take-up growing 49% year on year driven by the success of Sky Movies on Demand.

TalkTalk added 83,000 fibre broadband customers and 47,000 net broadband and phone customers. Revenue Generating Units (RGUs) grew by 280,000 during the quarter. The quarter saw the integration of the former Virgin Media off-net ADSL base.

TalkTalk posted overall revenues of £1.795 billion for the full year, up 4.2%, and EBITDA of £245 million, up 15%.