- 2017 outlook calls for accelerated OCF growth of 6-7%
- Topline drivers: New builds such as Project Lightning in UK, B2B growth, expanding mobile business
- They are working to accelerate growth to 7-8%
- Goal is to keep costs as flat as possible over next two years
- Project Lightning is on track with regards to penetration and ARPU
- Looking for 30% unlevered returns on new builds
- Targeting 40% penetration after 3 years in new builds
- Quad play: still early days but ahead of U.S.; fueled by an incumbent in every market. Liberty has mobile launched in every market; the economic benefit is churn reduction. Each market is treated differently.
- Preference is a full MVNO that maximizes control over customer relationship. They want to own the SIM card.
- They have invested in making the WiFi experience in the home very good. This is very important to the customer.
- 5G will take a while to be market ready. Not a priority for Liberty.
- Video: Invested to make a multi-screen, beautiful interface available. Churn rate on Horizon is lower. Provides replay TV back seven days on TV and mobile devices. Apps like YouTube and Netflix run on the device.
- No home runs in content in Europe. They look for smaller incremental content investments.
- Guiding to $1.5 billion of FCF in 2017; this is the trough. More vendor financing in 2017. They expect FCF will grow in 2018 and beyond.
- They have a lot of flexibility to scale back new builds if returns do not materialize making it low risk.
- Project Lightning has not seen much of a response from BT.
- There is recent progress in turning around Ziggo.
Article by Greg Speicher
