Despite booking net losses of USD331.3 million in the final three months of 2012, Liberty Global Inc (LGI) reported net earnings of USD322.8 million for the year to end December 2012, up from losses of USD772.7 million the previous year. Quarterly and annual revenues grew by 14% and 8% year-on-year to USD2.7 billion and USD10.3 billion respectively, driven by strong subscriber and revenue generating unit (RGU) growth. LGI noted that its Belgian and German operations were its best-performing units. Operating income for the group stood at USD1.98 billion for the year (+9.15% y-o-y) and USD500.7 million for the quarter (+22.7%). Meanwhile, CAPEX for the year dropped by 2.3% to USD1.88 billion whilst the sale of Austar added gains of USD924 million, helping to offset expenses, including USD1.68 billion in interest costs.
In terms of subscribers, LGI claimed 34.83 million RGUs (+6.2% y-o-y) across 19.79 million customers (+1.3%). Customers taking single-play subscriptions fell by 6.4% y-o-y to 10.73 million as users moved to multi-play offerings, with double- and triple-play subscribers increasing 5.6% and 15.8% to 3.06 million and 5.99 million.