Vodafone’s TV base declines as it prepares for German law change

Source: Vodafone

Vodafone’s TV base in Germany declined by 213,000 in the fiscal first half of the year, with a 93,000 drop in its second quarter to September, taking its total to 12.547 million TV customers. The company’s German converged customer base grew by 36,000 to 2.3 million over the same period.

The company said it was continuing to make progress in prepar4ing for the transition away from collective contracts with housing associations next year, citing a success rate of between 35-645% in trials to re-contract customers so far. The company has about 8.5 million MDU TV customers in the German market, generating €800 million in sales.

In Spain, the company’s second biggest TV market, where it is selling out to Zegona Communications, the UK-based ‘buy-fix-sell’ investor, the TV base declined by 16,000 in the quarter to 1.41 million. Theh company’s converged customer base remained “broadly stable” at 2.1 million.

In Italy, Vodafone’s TV base declined by 15,000 to 220,000, while in Portugal it gained 10,000 subs to end of 871,000 TV customers.

Across the rest of Europe, Vodafone lost 8,000 TV customers to end with 1.72 million, giving a grand total of 16.768 million TV subs, down 122,000 for the quarter.

Vodafone’s overall group frevenue for the first half was down 4.3% to €21.9 billion, while adjusted EBITDAaL was up 0.3% to €6.4 billion

CEO Margherita Della Valle said that Q2 had seen broad-based market growth for Vodafone, with Germany returning to growth of 1.1%.

She said the company was “seeing the first results of its strategy shift from volume to value” with price increases bearing fruit.

Della Valle said that the UK, Spain and Italy did not allow Vodafone to generate a positive return in excess of cost of capital. The UK merger with Hutchison and the sale of the Spanish unit are the results.

She said that the Spanish market had been “a challenged market’ and “extremely fragmented for many years”.