Company type | Public |
---|---|
ISIN | |
Industry | |
Predecessor | Liberty Media International UnitedGlobalCom |
Founded | 2005Douglas County, Colorado, U.S. | in
Headquarters |
|
Key people | Mike Fries (CEO) |
Products | |
Revenue | US$7.20 billion (2022) [2] |
US$2.37 billion (2022) [2] | |
US$1.47 billion (2022) [2] | |
Total assets | US$42.90 billion (2022) [2] |
Total equity | US$22.57 billion (2022) [3] |
Owner | John C. Malone (30.2%) |
Number of employees | 23,000 (2020) [4] |
ASN | |
Website | www |
Liberty Global Ltd. is a British-Dutch-American multinational telecommunications company domiciled in Bermuda, [5] with headquarters in London, Amsterdam and Denver. Its respective legal names are Liberty Global Holdings Limited (UK), Liberty Global B.V. (Netherlands) and Liberty Global, Inc. (United States), with the first of these being publicly traded. It was formed in 2005 by the merger of the international arm of Liberty Media (in turn, a spin-off of American cable-television group TCI) and UnitedGlobalCom (UGC). [6]
Liberty Global had an annual revenue of $11.5 billion in 2019, with operations in six countries and 20,600 employees. It has 10.8 million cable service subscribers, or 25.3 million revenue generation units (RGU), combining video, internet, and voice customers. [7] [8] [9] [10]
Liberty Global Inc. was founded in 2005 when Liberty Media International, Inc. (LMI) and UnitedGlobalCom, Inc. (UGC) merged. LMI and UGC became subsidiaries of Liberty Global. UGC founder was Gene Schneider. UGC was also built on acquisitions. [11] United International Holding, later called UGC, acquired 50% of UPC from Dutch electronic concern Philips in 1995, and 100% in 1997.
The new entity had operations in 18 countries and networks over approximately 23 million homes, making it one of the largest broadband services companies in the world. [12] [13]
Liberty acquired German company Unitymedia in November 2009 for $5.2 billion. [14] In 2010, Liberty sold its stake in Jupiter Telecommunications, a Japanese telecommunications-services provider. [15]
On November 9, 2012, Liberty Global acquired Puerto Rico-based cable company OneLink Communications.
In January 2013, Liberty Global raised its stake in Belgium-based Telenet from 50.2% to 58%. [16] In June 2013, Liberty Global acquired British cable group Virgin Media for $24 billion in cash and stock. [17] [18] The acquisition was noted by The New York Times as one of the 10 largest cable deals of all time. [19] It was reported that this acquisition would make Liberty Global the largest broadband company in the world. [6] Liberty agreed in October 2013 to sell Chellomedia for $1.035 billion except for its Benelux unit to AMC Networks. [16]
Liberty Global announced it would be acquiring Dutch cable company Ziggo for €10 billion in January 2014. The acquisition was completed in November 2014, when the services of UPC Nederland began to be merged into the new business. [20] Liberty Global and Discovery Communications became joint owners of All3Media in May 2014 in a £500 million joint deal. [21] [22] [23] In July 2014, Liberty Global acquired a 6.4% stake in ITV plc, valued at £481 million. [24] Liberty's stake in the company increased to 9.9% in July 2015. [25] [26]
In November 2015, Liberty Global announced its acquisition of Cable & Wireless Communications. The $5.3 billion deal expanded Liberty Global's presence into the Caribbean & greater Latin America. [27] [28] [29] The acquisition was completed in May 2016. [9] In 2015, Liberty established the stock Liberty Latin American & Caribbean (LiLAC) focusing on Panama and the Caribbean with assets in Chile and Puerto Rico. The company also owned a 49% stake in majority state-owned Trinidadian telco, TSTT, which it was eventually obliged to dispose of as the company itself competes with Liberty's wholly owned Trinidadian subsidiary, FLOW Trinidad. [30] [31] Liberty Global and Discovery Communications paid approximately $195 million for a 3.4% stake in Lions Gate Entertainment Group in November 2015. Liberty CEO Mike Fries joined the Lion's Gate board of directors as part of the acquisition. [32] [33] [34]
Liberty invested £7.5 million in global broadband cable network Technetix in July 2016. [35] [36] In November 2016, Liberty Global's Virgin Media subsidiary released its Netflix and other app-enabled set-top V6 box. [37] Liberty Global was also ranked 88th on the Forbes "World's Most Innovative Companies" list in 2016. [38]
At the end of 2017, Liberty Global announced the decision to sell its operations in Austria, UPC Austria – the country's largest cable operator, to T-Mobile Austria for €1.9 billion, which was then rebranded Magenta Telekom. [39]
In January 2018, Liberty Latin America spun off from Liberty Global. [40] The new publicly traded company, Liberty Latin America Ltd., operates independently throughout parts of the Caribbean and South America. [41]
On May 9, 2018, Liberty Global announced the sale of its operations in Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic to Vodafone for €19 billion ($22.7 billion). [42] The sale closed for $21.3 billion in July 2019. [43] All of these operations, formerly named UPC (Unitymedia in Germany), were since rebranded to Vodafone. In December 2018, Liberty Global announced the sale of its DTH satellite TV operations in Hungary (UPC Direct), Czech Republic, Slovakia (in both named freeSAT) and Romania (Focus Sat) to M7 Group. [44] Under M7 Group, Czech and Slovak operations were integrated with Skylink, Hungarian operations adopted Direct One name and logo, while Romanian operations retained its name, only changing its logo to match with its new parent.
In 2019, Liberty Global announced an initiative to offer broadband with speeds of 1 Gbps across several European cities through the company's GigaCities program. [45] [46]
In August 2020, Liberty Global announced that it would be buying Sunrise Communications AG for $7.4 billion. The company attempted to acquire Sunrise Communications multiple times; according to Mike Fries, the chief executive officer of Liberty Global, "It wasn't a question of 'is this a good deal?' only a matter of how it would get done". [47] On the 11th November Sunrise became a subsidiary of Liberty Global.
In September 2021, Liberty Global announce the sale of its Polish operations to Iliad Group's subsidiary Play (P4) for $1.8bn. [48] The transaction was closed on 1 April 2022. [49]
In July 2023, Liberty Global's shareholders voted overwhelmingly for Liberty Global to redomicile from the United Kingdom to Bermuda. [50] In November 2023, Liberty Global completed the redomicile.
In November 2024, Liberty Global announced the completion of the spin-off transaction of Sunrise. This transaction resulted in Sunrise becoming an independent public entity, operating autonomously in the Swiss telecommunications market. The move allowed Liberty Global shareholders to participate directly in Sunrise's future performance. [51]
In June 2015, Vodafone confirmed talks with Liberty Global focused on potential partnerships, but denied that a full merger was in the works. [52] [53] [54] Liberty Global invested in Guavus, a data analytics company, in September 2015. [55] In February 2016, it was announced that Vodafone and Liberty Global would merge Dutch operations. Liberty's Dutch subsidiary, Ziggo, would work with Vodafone's mobile network. [56] [57] Vodafone paid Liberty €1 billion as part of the joint venture valued at €3.5 billion. [58] [59] The deal was approved by the European Commission in August 2016. [60] On December 31, 2016, the proposed merger of Liberty Global's and Vodafone Group's Dutch operations was completed, resulting in a joint venture called VodafoneZiggo Group Holding B.V. [61]
In 2013–2016, Liberty Global invested EUR 14.5 billion in infrastructure, including investments to bring high-speed internet to four million more European households through new build and upgrades. [62]
In October 2017, Liberty Global opened the Telenet Innovation Center in Brussels, its second innovation hub alongside the Tech Campus near Amsterdam. The Innovation Center is focused on testing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and mobile technologies, including the introduction and preparation of 5G networks. [63]
Liberty Global offers Netflix in 30 countries in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean [64] and other video-on-demand platforms as MaxDome in Germany, Play and Play More in Belgium, and MyPrime in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ireland, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
In 2017, Liberty Global partnered with affiliate Lionsgate and subsidiary premium channel Starz on a television series, The Rook . [65] The show, which premiered in summer 2019, is adapted by Stephenie Meyer from the novel of the same name written by Daniel O'Malley. [66]
In February 2018, Liberty Global announced a partnership with Amazon Prime Video on the television series called The Feed , premiering in 2019. The show was co-produced in partnership with the Amazon Studios division and launched as an on-demand programme in Europe, Latin and North America. [67]
Horizon TV is Liberty Global's flagship platform with more than 10 million first-generation Horizon TV devices sold.
Liberty Global launched Horizon TV, a box to stream to televisions, in 2012. [68] H2, an upgraded version of the Horizon box, was launched in 2013. The new system included an upgraded remote control with a QWERTY keyboard. A secondary box connects wirelessly to the main device allowing TV, DVR and VoD streaming to multiple rooms in a subscriber's house. [69] Liberty partnered with ActiveVideo in 2013 to include ActiveVideo's CloudTV on the Horizon boxes. [70]
Twitter was integrated into Horizon's mobile app library in 2016. The addition allowed live tweets to be overlaid onto the screen of a program being broadcast. [71] [72] Horizon TV was also launched in Austria in 2016, making it available in all three German-speaking countries where Liberty Global operates. [73]
In September 2018, Liberty Global announced the next-generation video platform Horizon 4. [74]
Liberty Global operates through the following subsidiaries and shareholdings:
Part of Liberty Global is separately listed as LiLAC (Liberty Latin America and Caribbean Group), operating in over 20 countries under the consumer brands VTR, FLOW, Cabletica, Liberty, Más Móvil and BTC, as well as having a sub-sea fiber network.
In January 2018, Liberty Latin America spun off the main company and began operating independently from Liberty Global. [41]
Liberty Latin America's operations consist of Liberty Puerto Rico, a provider of pay-TV, Internet, and telephone services in Puerto Rico, and VTR, a Chile a cable provider of television, telephone, mobile, and internet services. Through the acquisition of Cable and Wireless Communications, Liberty Global has become the owner of the largest pay-TV and broadband provider in the Caribbean. In addition, the company also owns CWC's operations in the Seychelles named Cable and Wireless Seychelles.
Liberty Global serves six countries in Europe and is among the largest cable operators in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. [76]
On 7 May 2020, it was announced that Liberty Global and Telefónica had been in talks to merge their UK businesses in a deal worth an estimated £31bn. The merger would see Virgin Media and O2 form a 50:50 joint venture, making the combined business one of the UK's largest entertainment and telecommunications companies, with annual revenues of approximately US$13.6 billion and over 46 million subs. [77]
The merger was subject to customary regulatory approval and, if approved, was to be completed by mid-2021. [78] The merger was completed on 1 June 2021. [79]
NTL Incorporated, branded as ntl:, was a United States-listed British company founded in 1992, which provided cable television, cable internet and fixed-line cable telephone services. While NTL had its headquarters in New York City, the company's activities focused heavily on the United Kingdom, with operational headquarters in Hook, Hampshire.
Vodafone Group Plc is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.
Liberty Media Corporation is an American mass media company founded by John C. Malone in 1991. The company has three divisions, reflecting its ownership stakes in the Formula One Group, Sirius XM, and Live Nation Entertainment. The Sirius XM Holdings segment operates two audio entertainment companies, Sirius XM and Pandora. Sirius XM offers channels and information and entertainment services. Pandora is a streaming platform for searching for music and podcasts. As of 2024, Liberty Media is set to own three global motorsport businesses in the form of Formula One, Grand Prix motorcycle racing and World Superbikes.
Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom. The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but it sold its cable assets to NTL in 2000. It remained a significant player in the UK telecoms market and in certain overseas markets, especially in the former British colonies of the Caribbean, where it was formerly the monopoly incumbent. It was also the main supplier of communication in the British South Atlantic, including Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Vodafone Libertel B.V. is the second largest mobile phone company in the Netherlands, and was previously called Libertel. It is part of VodafoneZiggo, a joint venture between Ziggo and Vodafone Group.
UPC Romania was a telecommunications company in Romania, which provided cable television, broadband internet and fixed telephony to approximately 1 million customers. On July 31, 2019, Vodafone acquired the company and it was merged into Vodafone Romania on 31 March 2020.
NTL Communications (Ireland) Limited was a cable television and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) company in Ireland. As of 2005 it was owned by Liberty Global Europe, having been divested by NTL. It was rebranded as UPC Ireland.
Virgin Media Limited/Virgin Media O2 Limited is a telecommunications company from Britain, founded in 2007, which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica.
Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Global's telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the country. As of 3 August 2024, the company offers broadband internet, digital television digital (VoIP) telephony and mobile phone services to 1 million customers. Until 4 May 2010, Virgin Media Ireland traded under the name Chorus NTL and UPC Ireland until 5 October 2015. Its main competitors in the Irish pay TV market are Sky Ireland, Eir and Vodafone Ireland.
UPC Holding is a European telecommunications company owned by Liberty Global which provides cable television, broadband internet and fixed telephony in Europe.
UPC was the largest cable operator in Switzerland with around 1.1 million residential and business customers and was formed in 1994 through the merger of several cable operators. UPC has been a subsidiary of Liberty Global from 2005 until its discontinuation in 2022.
Virgin Media Television Ltd is a commercial television company in Ireland, based in Dublin. Launched in 1998 as TV3 Television Network, the TV3 Group was formed in January 2009. The company was acquired by Liberty Global in 2015, and the channels were rebranded to Virgin Media Television in 2018.
UPC Nederland was the second largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers.
Cable & Wireless Communications Ltd operating as C&W Communications is a telecommunications company which has operations in the Caribbean and Central America. It is owned by Liberty Latin America and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, US.
Telefonica UK Limited, trading as O2 (stylised as O2), is a British telecommunications services provider, headquartered in Reading, England which operates under the O2 brand. It is owned by VMED O2 UK Limited, a 50:50 joint venture between Telefónica and Liberty Global. O2 is the UK's largest mobile network operator, with about 23.4 million subscribers as of October 2024.
CloudTV is a software platform that delivers the web-media experience through television.
Qurate Retail, Inc., also known as Qurate Retail Group, is an American media conglomerate controlled by company chairman John C. Malone, who owns a majority of the voting shares.
Ziggo Holding B.V. is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing digital cable television, Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers.
Ziggo Sport is a sports television channel in the Netherlands, operated by Ziggo and owned by VodafoneZiggo. It is only available for Ziggo subscribers and broadcasts a variety of sports with a focus on major sporting events, a weekly talk show called "Peptalk," and sports-related films and documentaries. It also has a paid counterpart, Ziggo Sport Totaal, which can also be received by non-Ziggo subscribers. The channel started with a repeating promotional film on 2 November 2015, and officially launched on 12 November 2015.
VodafoneZiggo Group B.V. is a Dutch joint venture between Vodafone Group Plc and Liberty Global Plc, announced in February 2016, approved by the European Commission in August 2016 and completed in December 2016.