Virgin Media O2 confirms 2,000 job cuts, releases Q2 results

Tue, 25/07/2023 - 10:01
Lutz Shuler

Virgin Media O2 has confirmed plans to cut 2,000 jobs by the end of the year, representing 12% of its workforce. This coincides with the company’s Q2 results to June 2023, which places a heavy focus on nexfibre’s fixed network deployment.

This has scaled up to address 175,500 additional premises in Q2 2023, up from 107,800 in Q1 2023. This takes VMO2’s total gigabit footprint to 16.4 million homes.

Its combined FTTP footprint reached three million homes at the end of Q2 and is set to extend towards four million by the end of 2023.

In Mobile, 5G connectivity expanded to more than 2,800 towns and cities.

Conversely, its fixed customer base ended the quarter at 5.8 million, a 24,700 net reduction in Q2, attribute to the implementation of price rises over April and May.

Broadband saw a 15,300 net reduction and the contract mobile base had a 1,500 net reduction.

The total mobile base decreased by 991,300 connections to 44.0 million, due the migration of customers from one of the business’ smaller MVNO partners.

Financially, VMO2’s Transaction Adjusted Revenue increased 6.2% to £2,713.1m, 1.0% excluding the impact of nexfibre construction. Growth in Transaction Adjusted EBITDA increased to 4.6% to £1,016.6m.

CEO Lutz Schüler states that VMO2 is still on target to deliver over 50% of £540 million run-rate synergies by the end of 2023.

He said: “Amidst higher costs, rising usage and continued investment, we executed necessary price increases in line with our expectations with the impact starting to flow through to our Q2 revenue and EBITDA growth.

“For the remainder of the year we are focused on building commercial momentum, realising the synergies of the Joint Venture and future proofing our networks.”