Yahoo Finance Virgin Media O2 co-owner stokes float speculation
One of Virgin Media O2’s owners has stoked City expectations of a blockbuster float of the £31bn mobile and broadband giant as soon as next year.
Mike Fries, chief executive of Liberty Global, said he was mulling listings for some of its European telecoms operators, fuelling speculation that a listing of the cable and mobile company could be brought forward to 2022.
Virgin Media O2 previously said it would weigh a listing within three years when it joined forces in June to create a company with £11bn in revenue and 47m customers.
On a call with investors, Mr Fries said: "We have also talked about from time to time public listings, as a way of unlocking value, and we may pursue some of these strategies in 2022."
His comments come after Liberty appointed Michael Bishop from the US investment bank Goldman Sachs as vice-president of investor relations over the summer.
Liberty is also advertising for a director of equity capital markets, who will work in a wider team to "lead the process in close collaboration with the operating company chief finance officer in preparing for public listings (as and when)".
Virgin Media O2, which is jointly controlled by Liberty and Spain's Telefonica, recently stepped up its challenges to BT, Britain's biggest broadband provider, by vowing to expand its network to cover 80pc of the UK by accelerating its deployment of full-fibre.
In an update, Virgin Media O2 added 42,000 broadband customers and 108,000 mobile contracts in the third quarter.
It recorded a sixth consecutive quarter of growth in cable by adding 38,000 fixed customers to bring the total to 5.7m for the period.
Revenues rose by 0.7pc to £2.6bn as new smartphones from Samsung and Apple drove a 7.4pc increase in handset sales.
Profits fell 0.6pc to £912.7m on the back of increased investment in digital product development and marketing costs.
While network expansion through Project Lightning added a further 67,000 homes to 2.6m premises, the growth rate was slower than the 89,000 for the previous quarter.
Virgin Media O2’s chief executive, Lutz Schuler, blamed a pandemic hit and the supply chain disruption for the decline.
"Some of our vendors had challenges getting resources back from Europe. We had a bit of fibre shortage when you refer to the supply chain issues,” he said.
"I think it is an industry-wide problem and you can see that contractors are getting offers from competitors with higher prices. We have insured the resources, but to get there we had a little bit of issues in [the third quarter] with one of the partners going into administration."
Liberty Global was contacted for comment.
