DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Liberty Global plc (Liberty Global or the Company) (NASDAQ: LBTYA, LBTYB and LBTYK), today announces financial and operating results for the three months (Q3) and nine months (YTD) ended September 30, 2013. Some of the information below concerning Virgin Media relates to periods prior to our ownership of the business. Highlights for the 2013 periods as compared to the same periods for 2012 (unless noted) include:

Liberty Global's President and CEO Mike Fries commented, The third quarter results that we issued today reflect the first full quarter with Virgin Media in our consolidated figures. Adjusting to include their results for the full nine-month period, YTD combined revenue and OCF were $13.1 billion and $5.8 billion, respectively, reflecting rebased revenue growth of 4% and OCF growth of 5%. Meanwhile, our combined Adjusted Free Cash Flow increased 24% to $968 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2013.

These results were driven by the continued appeal of our market-leading bundles, featuring the most advanced video and broadband services available. Weve added over 870,000 subscribers YTD, with Q3 additions of 314,000 representing a 64% sequential increase over our second quarter RGU additions. In the U.K., penetration of our TiVo product is approaching 50%, while Horizon TV has been launched in four European markets, most recently in Germany and Ireland. On the broadband front, weve been substantially increasing maximum download speeds above 200 Mbps in many markets, and at the same time refocusing the feature bundles in most of our fall campaigns to include broadband tiers ofat least 100 Mbps."

M&A highlights for Q3 include substantial progress on our Virgin Media synergy plans, and the recently announced sale of substantially all of Chellomedia's assets (the "Chellomedia Sale"). With respect to Virgin Media, we now expect to achieve up to double our initial $180 million estimate of combined synergies for OCF and capital expenditures once the integration process is substantially complete. In addition, the Chellomedia Sale is expected to close in Q1 2014 and the resulting 750 million ($1.0 billion) in proceeds will provide us with increased flexibility to invest in more strategic content going forward.

Our balance sheet remains strong with long-dated, fixed maturities and $5.5 billion of consolidated liquidity6 before considering the $1.0 billion of proceeds to be received from the Chellomedia Sale. With an average long-term debt tenor of seven years, we have demonstrated strong and reliable access to the capital markets while lowering the average cost of our debt by 80 basis points over the last twelve months to 6.7%. Weve also been actively returning capital to shareholders through stock buybacks with approximately $1.0 billion spent this year, including nearly $500 million in Q3 alone. As a result, we remain on track to complete our two-year target for $3.5 billion of buybacks by mid-2015.

Subscriber Statistics

At September 30, 2013, we provided a total of 47.8 million services, consisting of 21.8 million video, 14.1 million broadband internet and 11.9 million telephony subscriptions, to our 24.5 million unique customers. During Q3 2013, we increased our total RGUs by 316,000, driven by 314,000 organic additions and a small acquisition in Switzerland. From a product perspective, our Q3 organic RGU additions reflect broadband internet and telephony additions of 214,000 and 153,000 RGUs, respectively, and a loss of 53,000 video subscribers. Of particular note, our broadband internet additions represented a record third quarter performance and our video RGU attrition was our best Q3 result since 2007.

In terms of comparative performance, our third quarter RGU additions were broadly consistent with our Q3 2012 additions of 320,000. However, sequentially, our Q3 RGU additions increased by 64% as compared to our reported 191,000 RGU additions for Q2 2013. This sequential growth was driven by our European operations, particularly our Central and Eastern European (CEE), Belgian and British businesses, as nine out of twelve markets delivered improved performance.

Geographically, our Q3 RGU additions consisted of 222,000 in Western Europe, 49,000 in CEE and 42,000 in Latin America.7 For Western Europe, our German business, led by strength in broadband, delivered 124,000 RGU additions in Q3, a similar result to our additions in Q2 2013. Our Q3 subscriber gains were negatively impacted by the loss of approximately 16,000 RGUs related to a December 2011 loss of a housing contract. Another key contributor to growth in Western Europe was our Belgian operation. Supported by the launch of compelling new triple-play bundles, Telenet posted record third quarter RGU additions of 48,000, which compares favorably to 34,000 in Q3 2012 and 17,000 in Q2 2013.

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Liberty Global Reports Q3 & YTD Results