Liberty Global offloads Swiss business for $6.3 billion
Liberty Global has continued its great withdraw from the European markets with another sale, this time convincing Sunrise its 1 million Swiss customers are worth $6.3 billion.
Announcing the deal alongside its financial results, it does look to be a good deal for Liberty Global. This is a business which has been going through somewhat of a restructure, attempting to find profit in a challenging industry by refocusing resources, though it now appears the years of aggressive acquisitions and expansion have not paid off.
“The past fourteen months have been transformational for Liberty Global,” said CEO Mike Fries. “After two decades of buying, building and growing world-class cable operations in Europe, we have announced or completed transactions in six of our twelve markets at premium valuations.”
While $6.3 billion certainly pales in comparison to some of the mega-acquisitions we’ve seen in recent years, it might be worth putting a bit of context around this transaction.
UPC Switzerland has passed just over 2.3 million homes across the country, this is more than 50% of Swiss homes, currently commanding a subscriber base of 1.1 million. The video offering currently has a subscriber base of just over 1 million subscribers (645,000 of which are premium) and mobile subscriptions total 146,000.
Whether these figures justify the $6.3 billion which Sunrise is handing over we’ll let you decide, though just as a point of comparison BT bought EE, and its 30 million mobile subscribers, for £12.5 billion in 2014.
For Sunrise, such an acquisition will add buoyancy to already positive momentum. Over the last three months, Sunrise realised 42,300 postpaid net adds, UPC Switzerland was 8,500 by comparison, while Internet and TV subscribers rose by 8.3% and 14.1% year-on-year respectively.
