Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's Second Quarter 2021 Investor Call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global and any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the expressed written consent of Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at libertyglobal.com.
After today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question and answer session. Page 2 of the slides details the company's Safe Harbor statement regarding forward looking statements. Today's presentation may include forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. These forward looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed and Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Forms 10Q and 10 ks as amended.
Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any statement is based. I would like now to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries.
Thanks, operator, and hello, everyone. As always, we appreciate you joining us today for the Q2 results call. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so So I'll begin with some operating results and a deep dive into a couple of topics that I'm sure will be of interest to you all. Then after Charlie covers the financials, we'll get right to your questions. I'll kick it off on Slide 4 with 5 key headlines that should capture the broader narrative of the quarter and our value creation opportunity.
First of all, our goal of creating FMC Champions in our core markets is working. We made a very is into really 4 key countries where we've become fixed mobile champions. I'm going to illustrate this more fully on the next slide, but Despite reducing our geographic reach by 40%, we increased aggregate revenue by 40% and now serve a larger base of $85,000,000 fixed and mobile subs. And those FMC champions are driving scale and growth, supported by unrealized synergies of $12,600,000,000 from our last two deals in the UK and Switzerland, that's on an NPV basis. And by the way, given our ownership, over $8,000,000,000 of that will accrue to our shareholders.
A second, the demand for fast and reliable connectivity in Europe continues to anchor strong commercial momentum across our footprint. I'll speak of the numbers in a second, but we reported good revenue and subscriber growth and a standout quarter from Virgin Media O2. 3rd, we've talked quite a bit over the last year or so about our network strategy options. Yesterday, we made a big move in the UK announcing our plans to upgrade to fiber across our footprint, I'll speak to that in a moment. But the main takeaway is that we have great options in every market and one size will not fit all here.
To answer the question preemptively cable and DOCSIS will continue to play a big role even in markets where we intend to upgrade to fiber. And given our speed leadership today and heavy investment in fiber rich HFC, we can approach this moment in an offensive posture with a clear focus on free cash flow and recretive returns on capital. 4th, it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore our ventures portfolio, which has been valued by 3rd parties at $3,000,000,000 or about $5 per share. That's around 20% of our current stock price. And I'm guessing very little is being recognized today.
We're going to continue to provide greater and greater transparency of our tech, content and infrastructure investments that is strategically aligned with our core operations and they also benefit from our unique track record in telecoms and treasury and M and A. We also announced that we're engaged in non binding negotiations with Iliad's Polish subsidiary to sell UPC Poland for $1,900,000,000 that's about 9.3 times EBITDA, we don't normally announce these things, but Iliad was required to do so for other reasons. But I can't tell you, these of asset sales at these sorts of multiple should also help bridge the value gap in our stock. And then speaking of our stock, we're making a big commitment today is to put our money where our mouth is. Rather than decide periodically how much and at what price we're going to purchase shares, we're announcing today our commitment to buyback are 10% of our market cap annually for 3 years, which means we're adding $400,000,000 to our current $1,000,000,000 program for the remainder of 2021.
Now I just referenced the transformation of our platform over the last 4 to 5 years, and we've been trying to find a way to better illustrate the transition to an MC Champion and Slide 5 does that I believe. If you had asked me 10 years ago, do you think you could build a better stronger business by exiting half your markets and Concentrating all of your resources into a handful of fully converged fixed mobile operations, I probably would have said, I don't know, I'm not sure. When broadband competition intensified and cable consolidation slowed and the demand for broadband capacity and mobility skyrocketed, We rapidly pivoted and are a much stronger and more valuable company today for it. That involved 4 key steps. First, of course, We exited 5 subscale markets like Germany and Austria at premium multiples to mobile only players like Otjitelekom and Vodafone.
Aggregate proceeds were $25,000,000,000 and these guys needed a fixed network solution in their markets. On one hand, this validated the underlying private market value of our cable operations, is something we continue to demonstrate even today with the potential sale of Poland. But on the other hand, it allowed us to focus resources on those markets we had a pathway to fixed mobile convergence by acquiring or merging with mobile operators specifically in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and of course, of the U. K. So even though we shrunk our geographic footprint by 40% with a concentration in 4 countries, We have 25,000,000 more fixed to mobile subs than before, dollars 85,000,000 in total and 40% more revenue, $24,000,000,000 in total on an aggregate basis with a very balanced blend of fixed and mobile revenues.
And the benefits of that fixed mobile transformation are showing up in our results. It was a solid quarter for our businesses really across the board as you can see on Slide 6. Will deliver positive revenue growth across all four key markets. Charlie is going to walk through the details, but VodafoneZiggo grew 3%, Telenet and Virgin Media grew 4%, the latter representing just the 2 months prior to the merger. By the way, for a good look at pro form a financials, of Virgin Media 2 for the Q2 and restated for prior periods, take a look at their fixed income release.
We can't provide that data in our GAAP presentation this quarter, but we'll do that going forward. You'll see that Virgin Media O2 combined revenue was up slightly in the quarter and EBITDA was up 6% on the back of cost control and commission savings in the mobile business. It was also a good quarter for broadband and post of paid mobile net adds, which totaled around 250,000 in the quarter across the group on an aggregate basis. And here on the top left, we do show full quarter results for Virgin Media O2, which added 22,000 fixed customer additions, our 5th straight quarter of customer growth, by the way. That was supported by 36,000 broadband net adds, up 8% from Q2 last year and 65,000 postpaid mobile apps.
You can see on the bottom left, we continue to benefit from convergence with total fixed mobile convergence ratios up to over 40% in all operations. Virgin Media O2 now sits above 40% with the addition of the O2 mobile subs who subscribe to Virgin and Switzerland is at 56%, which is clearly a medium term target for every market. The right hand side of the chart provides some operating highlights for each of the big 4 opcos. I'm not going to go through all of this in detail, Virgin Media O2 is off to a great start as of June 1, with record fixed sales in the month and strong mobile ads. The team is working on some exciting commercial offers and is focused on driving the benefits of an expanding 5 gs presence and the availability of 1 gig broadband across 100% of the footprint by year end.
Sunrise UPC continues to benefit from strong sales momentum and the early rollout of FMC offers was 6,000 broadband ads and 41,000 postpaid mobile ads in the quarter. The integration in Switzerland is right on track. In fact, The team just raised the synergy target by CHF 50,000,000, which after cost to capture brings the NPV of synergies to CHF 3,700,000,000 up from CHF 3,100,000,000 VodafoneZiggo delivered its 9th consecutive quarter of revenue growth with fixed ARPU increases and mobile postpaid ads offsetting the loss of broadband subs. And with 5 gs rolling out and 1 gig services rolling out there, the company is well positioned to deliver its 2021 EBITDA on free cash flow guidance. And finally, Telenet continues to be our most innovative operator, launching yet another converged fixed mobile offer called 1, which will help the company deliver positive subscriber growth in video, broadband and mobile for the quarter.
So each of our 4 key OpCos are performing well. Now Let me switch gears to a subject on Slide 7. I know you're all interested in it. I'm sure by now you've seen the announcement and read the press and analyst remarks about our decision to upgrade Virgin Media O2's fixed network to fiber over the next 7 years or so. We already have fiber to the premise to about 7% of our homes through the lightning build.
So we're talking about 14,300,000 homes to be upgraded at a cost of about £100 per premise. And lots of discussion around why are we doing this? What does this mean for Cable and DOCSIS? Is this cost really that low? Let me start by reminding everyone that Virgin is today the undisputed speed leader on 15,500,000 homes across the UK.
Average customer speed is only 200 megabits per second with the balance of the market around 40 megabits or so. So speed matters in the UK. Of course, that's why BT is building fiber, but today they only pass about 10% to 15% on our footprint, we believe, and we'll be offering 1 gig services to our entire footprint in 5 short months from now. So using an Olympic analogy, we all have our eye on advancing to the 10 meter diving platform, if you will, over the next 7 years with 10 gigabit speeds. But today, we're already standing on the 3 meter platform and the rest of the market, in our view, just has their toes in the water at the edge of the pool.
It doesn't matter how fast BT gets to 1 gig, we will always have an advantage. It's almost not a fair fight. And all of that is attributable to cable and DOCSIS, which will be part of our network solution in the U. K. For a long time to come.
We're not decommissioning our cable network, quite the contrary. We are simply expanding its capacity by pushing the fiber that's already there in the ground even closer to the customer. In fact, that's why we can upgrade for a fraction of BT's cost. We already have fiber deep into the network in mostly urban markets and we have access to our own underground ducting that will require far less digging and that's the most expensive part. And for these same reasons, upgrading the fiber is only marginally more expensive than DOCSIS 4, which is not the case in every market, but we made this decision pretty easy in the UK.
Like everyone else, we will incur costs to connect the drop to the home, but that will be a variable cost based upon demand over time. It's also important to point out that these are gross CapEx call. So they don't take into account the expected revenue uplift that could occur here. You can see some of those economic benefits outlined on the right side of this chart. Both DOCSIS 4 and fiber to the premise will make our B2C and B2B services more competitive, that's clear.
But given the marketing halo around fiber that seems to be building up in the U. K. And the benefits of symmetrical services to the enterprise market, we would argue that fiber probably has
is a slight advantage and will derive
more value. Similarly, while cable can do wholesale, just look at Telenet, the likelihood of deriving value from the £1,000,000,000 wholesale market in the UK, if we chose to do it, which is quite mature and busy, is enhanced by an off fiber solution. Since we only cover Half the country, it's safe to assume that wholesalers want to keep their technology platform simple and seamless across providers, and a fiber solution does that of course. Beyond those economic benefits, fiber to the premise in the U. K.
Also provides greater confidence as we think through network expansion options beyond the steady lightning build today and we continue to evaluate that opportunity to add an additional 7,000,000 homes sort of a supercharged lightning, if you will. And we're in good discussions with financial and strategic partners about what that might look like. So stay tuned. Now in light of this U. K.
Announcement, I think it's important to stress that there's no direct read across to cable or other markets from this decision. Because the truth is we have multiple paths to 10 gig in every market and we're evaluating the right path on a case by case basis. So Slide 8 lays out how we're thinking about it across three approaches. The first, of course, is simply accessing someone else's fiber network, allowing us to avoid the CapEx associated with the upgrade and providing some measure of market rationality if other than pursuing the same approach. Sunrise has successfully done this in Switzerland with the Swisscom wholesale arrangements.
The negatives or costs are also clear though. You're foregoing owner economics in your most and you're somewhat exposed to fluctuation in wholesale rates among other issues. Obviously, DOCSIS 4 will be a transformational technology development when it arrives. It has a robust ecosystem of cable operators around the world, particularly in the U. S, supporting the innovation of the platform.
As we've seen in the transition from DOCSIS 2 to DOCSIS 3 and then to DOCSIS 3.1, the costs are generally lower than a fiber solution as they build upon the existing platform before it and the rollout can be faster. But on the flip side, DOCSIS does require a relatively substantial one time investment in the active and passive components of the network to enhance spectrum capacity and speed each time you upgrade. It's is also not clear when the technology will be available for commercial exploitation, but we are part of a select group of operators working together to accelerate that timetable. And then finally, while DOCSIS 4 will is to 10 gig. There's no current road map beyond that or a forecast for what it will cost to get to say 50 gig.
Fiber solves both of those future issues of course. As our announcement today makes clear, building fiber to the premise is a real and accretive option for us in certain markets. Marty mentioned the clear path to 50 gig speed, the benefits of symmetrical services, especially in the B2B market and a significant opportunity that some markets offer around wholesale revenue. Price for that is higher from cost, which vary significantly by market. The decision about which path we'll take always comes down to a few key questions.
Is clear to us that we are likely to avail ourselves of all three options across our footprint and to varying degrees by market. Is the competitive environment. What other operators are doing? Are they building fiber? How quickly?
2nd, as I've just mentioned, is the relative CapEx costs associated with each option, that's obvious. Where it starts to get interesting is around the economic benefits that accrue from one approach to the other, specifically the positive impact on the B2C and B2B competitiveness, the size and attractiveness of the wholesale market as a provider or a user and of course the strategic and financial partnerships you can form to support the plan. I can tell you that work is underway, well underway in every market. You're probably familiar with Telenet's announced with Flubius to upgrade Flanders to fiber over time. Ireland looks a lot like the U.
K. To us. Switzerland is likely to be a hybrid approach and Holland is is still in the early phases of analyzing the best plan, but a fiber deep docs to support strategy might make the most sense there. In the end, as we've done in the UK, are going to be extremely focused on optimizing the medium term and longer term ability to compete, grow and generate free cash flow as you make those decisions in every market. Now I'll end my remarks on Slide 9 with a quick recap of how we intend to create value for shareholders from this point forward and it comes down to 3 core pillars, if you will.
1st and foremost, we're going to focus on maximizing the value of our fixed mobile operations. These are the crown jewels of our business. We've worked hard to build scale as a number 1 and number 2 player in each country, so we can shape markets, radically innovate and make the important strategic decisions that are going to underpin growth for years to come. How will we do that? Was already seen in Holland and Belgium that helps when you have a near term catalyst of synergies to kick start growth and support cash flow longer term.
We also know that in an increasingly competitive market convergence is working. It drives cross sell and up sell. It reduces churn and make customers happier. Nobody debates that anymore. The key is to stay rational on pricing and put the real effort into seamless digital experiences that keep customers coming back for more.
The end game in every market is to generate distributable cash to the parent from free cash flow, dividends, recast, whatever source. That's the metric that matters to us and that's the metric that will fuel our model. Now as we provide more visibility to our infrastructure and network strategies, you're going to see that these are largely offensive as I've just gone through. In many cases like the U. K, they come with significant strategic opportunities around new revenue streams, network financing and strategic partnerships.
Hopefully also a rerating of our business. And then lastly, we'll always look for ways to create demonstrable and will be transparent value either through asset sales like the potential sale of Poland and possible public listings in markets where there is serious pent up demand for local telecom champions. The 2nd major pillar is becoming too big and too important to ignore. And that's of course our growing ventures portfolio. With a focused investment strategy around tech, content and infrastructure in markets and services that are adjacent to our core operations, we continue to create value, whether that's benefiting from some smart early venture capital deals such as Ploom or Skills or watching some larger positions like ITV, Univision or Formula E Appreciate.
We're also excited about our move into infrastructure, where we have a real right to play, given our track record in telecoms, financing and M and A. All in all, the portfolio is valued at $3,000,000,000 which I mentioned about $5 per share and is starting to realize cash returns has already returned $400,000,000 to the parent. By the way, we've begun the process of monetizing hidden assets in our OpCos like towers in Holland, Belgium and the UK. That could add about $2 per share net of adjustments in the OpCos and that's not accounted for either in the Ventures Group, is not in that portfolio or in our stock, so watch this space. And then the 3rd pillar is our levered equity model, which is unique in the European landscape and distinguishes us from mainstream telcos in Europe.
At the core of this strategy is the prudent use of leverage, in our case 4 to 5 times on a fixed rate currency hedged and siloed basis and that creates the opportunity for recaps and greater equity appreciation. You all know and understand that strategy. But we combine that with a strong stock buyback plan that just got stronger today with our commitment to repurchase 10% of our market cap will be annually for 3 years. And again, that means we're adding $400,000,000 to this year's $1,000,000,000 program, only 3 quarters of which we've spent so far, And we'll seek to purchase 10% of the shares in 2022 and 2023. So that was a mouthful for me, I know.
And let me turn it over to Charlie, and Then we'll get straight to your questions. I look forward to addressing all of those shortly. Charlie, over to you.
Thanks, Mike. I'm starting by highlighting our strong performance in Q2, where we achieved revenue growth across all markets and consolidated revenue growth of 3.4%. Now, whilst there's an element of COVID recovery in areas like sports and broadcasting, there has been very limited recovery in areas like roaming, And we're seeing positive underlying growth across all our businesses. The UK grew 4.4%, which includes a roughly 2% benefit from Premium Sports, with continued strong conversions volumes and B2B performance driving growth. Telenet also realized strong underlying growth in Q2, but the near 4% growth rate does benefit from a €30,000,000 year over year improvement in broadcast revenues.
And as we guided earlier, Switzerland's return to revenue growth, Fueled by continued strong mobile volumes, B2B performance and the consumer business that continues to stabilize through positive broadband sub momentum. Whilst VodafoneZiggo continues on the trend of strong financial growth, posting a 3% year on year increase versus the prior year, which marks a milestone of 9 consecutive quarters of positive growth. Q2 saw growth across all segments, including mobile will be held on both the consumer and B2B sides of the business as COVID drags abated. On the next slide, we provide details of our adjusted EBITDA, where cost to capture synergies continue to weigh on results in the UK and Switzerland. Virgin Media performed in line with prior year despite $8,000,000 of pre merger cost to capture.
And it's worth noting that the recovery in premium sports revenues is offset by increased programming spend year on year, given the credits that we received in Q2 of 2020. The Swiss performance continues to improve and The 3.1% decline is explained by $9,000,000 of cost to capture and higher growth in related investments in marketing and B2B. Synergy benefits are limited in the quarter despite the recent MVNO migration back to our own network, but those savings will become apparent in half 2. Telenet's growth rate was suppressed due to the acceleration of programming rights in the prior year period as live sporting events were paused in the Q2 of 2020, the benefit of which was seen in the Q1 results. But taken together, Telenet achieved nearly 2% first half year EBITDA growth.
And in the Netherlands, a 2% EBITDA decline was expected given the estimated €21,000,000 impacts of COVID related temporary broadcast suspension are not recurring settlement in Q2 of 2020. VodafoneZigga remains on track for full year guidance. Focusing now on OFCF, we present a year to date view of our performance, illustrating the significant OFCF generation of our core businesses. Despite a headwind of $58,000,000 of cost to capture, the consolidated group delivered 2.1% growth in the first half. UK OCF grew 2.3% in the 1st 5 months of the year and we reached the milestone of 2,500,000 Lightning Homes.
We continue to build efficiently and our cost per premise continues to trend lower delivering a cost per home of £576 in the quarter. The Swiss team remained focused on the integration and incurred significant costs in the first half to achieve longer term synergy realization. The $41,000,000 of half one costs to CAPTCHA helped lay the groundwork for future network migrations, IT integration and the alignment of the product roadmaps including B2B, although OFCF growth in Switzerland would otherwise have been positive. In Belgium, OFCF declined around 1%, Whilst in the Netherlands, OFCF grew 1.6% in the first half, as we continue to invest in the network and remain on track to have upgraded 80% of our footprint to 1 gig speeds by the end of the year. Focusing on our core Libtay Global performance metric of free cash flow, we delivered $717,000,000 of free cash flow in half 1.
Our strong first half performance indicates we are on track for our full year guidance of $1,350,000,000 which represents 26% year on year growth, with growth accelerating on a per share basis as we continue to aggressively retire our stock. As of July, we retired nearly 80,000,000 shares since the year end of 2019, and the next slide illustrates our year to date buyback performance. As you can see, as of July, We repurchased $765,000,000 of Liberty Global Swap as we approach our initial $1,000,000,000 authorization. As Mike announced, we're committed to repurchasing 10% of our market cap a year over the next 3 years, which serves to increase the 2021 buyback to around $1,400,000,000 supported by our significant free cash flow and our corporate liquidity, which includes a cash balance of $4,100,000,000 as of quarterend. Our Ventures portfolio is currently valued at $3,000,000,000 which reflects the full color unwind on ITV, which we completed in early Q2 and the continued monetization of our skilled stake, where we've realized over $80,000,000 to date.
During the quarter, we also announced the creation of our AtlasHead joint venture with Digital Colony, utilizing our owned real estate to provide cloud providers, streaming services and enterprises with high performance edge of network facilities through which they can distribute low latency applications and services such as 5 gs, gaming, IoT and edge compute. We we expect that transaction to close in Q3 of 2021. To conclude, we are executing our FMC strategy across all markets with positive revenue growth across our markets, synergies validated in the U. K. And upgraded in Switzerland.
In the U. K, we're excited to announce a cost effective upgrade to full fiber by 2028 and we're increasing our buyback program for 2021, whilst committing to repurchasing 10% of our market cap annually over the next 3 years. Finally, we are confirming all guidance targets, noting Virgin Media O2 management were not part of the Merger Clean team and as such are in the process of validating the combined business plan. And with that operator, we'll take questions.
Will be conducted electronically. Followed by the digit 1 on your phone. In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you ask only one question. Will be available. All right, we'll go ahead and take our first question from David Wright with Bank of America.
Thank you very much for taking the questions today, Mike. I'm going to begin with something A little bit more curveball, if you don't mind. The equity of your stock has been, I'd say, a disappointment over the last few years. You guys obviously reflected in some recent buybacks. I know that you and John are very frustrated with the Telenet equity and the valuations given.
You've managed to do all these deals recently without equity. And right now, you're having to justify This big CapEx spend in the UK to a market that's very focused on short term cash flows, etcetera, when you are confident in the Long term value creation, and that's exactly that I think the frustration that led iliad's owner, Xavier Neil, this morning to basically say, well, I don't need to deliver those short term cash flows when I know there is longer value to be created. And he's obviously made the move to buy the stock back in. Do Do you ever find yourself sat around the table, you, Charlie and maybe John saying, just why are we bothering with these equity capital markets? Why don't we just buy the lot in, we can lever up and we can invest as we know best to create value.
So just throwing that out there, Mike, love to know your thoughts.
Quite a curveball, but not what we expected to start the conversation. But thanks, David. I appreciate the question, And I understand the question. And surely, every entrepreneur or CEO or Chairman of a company that feels like it's achieving more than the market is recognizing wonders about those sorts of things. Why wouldn't we?
On the other hand, I think it's important to point out that we are In a way, buying out the public, right? When you buy $1,400,000,000 stock this year and you agree to purchase another 10 And of the market cap, by the way, not the market cap, the shares. So if the stock rises, we're still spending whatever it costs to buy 10% of the shares. I saw one analyst Say, well, that's only $1,400,000,000 every year. That assumes the stock doesn't move.
It's the number of shares. If stock doubles, we're still buying stock, That 10%. So we are in a sense doing what you're saying, but perhaps in a more measured way and perhaps in a less expensive way. If you look back, we have repurchased well over half the company at varying prices, but generally prices that are less than today's price. And for those shareholders who believe in what you're doing, it's a way of ensuring that they ride along with you in that slow go private, if you will.
And If there's only one share remaining and you own it, you've done well. So we are in a sense doing the same thing, which is giving shareholders an opportunity Exit if they're frustrated and understanding what we do know about our business, we're confident and putting our capital and our free cash flow to work to buy those shares. So that's all I'll say at this point. Those two businesses, if you look at Altice and if you look at Iliad, they have their own challenges and issues. I don't think our shareholders would be thrilled If we put an offer out at 7 times EBITDA to take the company private, I don't think they'd accept it.
So those are unique circumstances where perhaps those businesses have their own challenges that warrant those kinds of multiples. I think our business is worth more. I think most shareholders understand that. And those who don't, We're in the market everyday buying stock.
We'll take our next question from Robert Grindle with Deutsche Bank.
Yes. Hi, Dan. Thanks very much. I was are half expecting some guidance around the dividend from Virgin 2 as a clue to where group free cash flow might be going. But you've taken the different approach by committing to your buyback, which you've just been talking about.
Can you give us some background for thinking behind this? Is it because you're not sure yet about the funding for fiber, supercharged Project Lightning, whether to go alone or with someone else? Or is there some other rationale behind this approach? Thanks.
I think it's pretty straightforward, Robert. We have spent quite a bit of time putting together, we believe, a fixed mobile group of a group of fixed mobile businesses that are are strong, have great cash flow prospects and great strategic and competitive positions. We also now have a very good handle on What the next 5 to 10 years of network and technology evolution means to those businesses, and we are increasingly confident is about the value of those businesses. And so, it seems to us a good time to put a stake in the ground and reinforce our commitment to the stock and the business as we know more and have a better understanding of what our future looks like. So I'd say it's not a defensive move, quite the opposite.
It's an offensive decision to take advantage of What we believe is an undervalued stock and to show that confidence to investors, of course, by committing to a is a clear buyback strategy as opposed to an annual one where we let you know every 12 months what we might or might not be doing. Secondly, I think it's helpful for investors when we can demonstrate our willingness to not just use free cash flow, And if that requires us to utilize cash as opposed to just free cash flow to do that, then we'll do that. That's also, I think, a great statement of confidence, plus takes a bit of an overhang off as it relates to those investors who feel like we should be deploying cash more quickly. So I can't see anything but good news in the statement. It's not defensive.
It's hopefully something most investors appreciate.
Our next question comes from Akhil Dattaani with JPMorgan.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe I can focus on the UCI, please. You mentioned, Mike, that at this stage, the Virgin Media Management team are not part of the merger process.
Obviously, they've not been in a position to update us on their plans. I just wondered if you could comment on when we might expect that. Do we expect over the next quarter? Is there going to be a standalone where they'll give us an update. So how do we think about that?
And I guess more specifically, when we think about the UK, There's a lot of moving parts as you outlined in your introduction. What do you think are the biggest decisions and bit of strategic things that need to be thought through by the management team. And I guess the one that we think about a lot is the wholesale strategy. So maybe you can give us any sort of color on How you think about wholesale for Liberty, that would be so for Virgin, sorry, that would be really interesting too.
Sure. I'll take the first one and then Lutz is on. I'll ask him to address how the management team is coming together, the progress he's made in the organization and his commitment to the Board of the joint venture is to when he'll feel we've got a really good handle on next year and the years that come because lots of good work is happening there. I think the biggest decisions in the UK should be pretty self evident. And I've kind of directly or indirectly will mention some of those.
Of course, if we're as we commit to invest in fiber, That and the balance of our footprint that isn't already fiber, we want to be sure we're focused on those things I listed on the right hand side of the slide, is mainly ensuring that we're getting the benefit of that investment in our B2C and B2B businesses, 1st and foremost. Also though that we are examining opportunities to work with financial and strategic partners and potentially is wholesale partners to further monetize and utilize that investment. We're specifically and by design not being are very clear about those plans today because there's lots of work to do and lots of options to consider. But you should assume that we are is looking at this purely from an economic and an offensive point of view, and we believe there are opportunities to explore the economic benefits that should derive from this network investment beyond simply being more competitive in the B2B and B2C space. We also have to look closely at our decisions going forward around network expansion that we've talked about on many calls.
And I think we're taking one step at a time. This is obviously a first step. But I think going forward, we will look very quickly at the potential to expand the network beyond the current footprint And potentially do that with partners as well in an accretive way. So lots of big decisions that I think revolve around the network, but all of them in our minds are taken with a lens and you can bet that our partners at Telefonica use the same lens What value does it create and what is the impact it will have on our cash flows and dividends? So we're being very, I would say thoughtful about this and we're going to make decisions in the best interest of all parties, including and mostly concluding shareholders.
Luz, you want to talk about the management team and how you're coming together on the broader strategic and operational goals?
Yes. Sure. So we have 4 priorities in BMO2. 1 is integrate to both companies. 2nd is keep and accelerate the business momentum 3rd, transform the company into digital and 4th, find the right paths to the fixed network extension.
On number 1, we had really a jump start. So we have the top 100 of the organization announced since a month. We have been just sharing our plan for this year with our Board yesterday. So obviously, the Board has to decide now. And the minute the Board decides, I think you will get your guidance.
But I think what I can say is that this was very much in line with expectation from both shareholders. We are working now on a new 3 years plan until October. And after that, we'll get our board approval and share the outline with you guys. And also, we have already reconfirmed that the team is able to get to the €540,000,000 run rate synergies. Why can't we do this already?
Because we've spent quite a lot of time on the pre merger activities. So we've built on a pretty strong foundation here. Business momentum, I think you've seen our momentum, I mean in Q2 numbers, look at our competitors, look at what we are doing. So we are approaching this integration with strong business momentum both across mobile and fixed. Digital, I think, is we shouldn't touch it now.
I'm sure we'll find some time. We will transform our business entirely into digital. And network expansion, I mean, it's right, Mike said it, it's a big step. It's an offensive move. We'll have business for us in.
And now we talk about Finding the right solution for these additional 7,000,000 homes, find the right balance, how to invest our capital into 5 gs and 4 gs capacity and find the right partnering model. So a lot to do, good start, good momentum. Back to you, Mike.
Okay. Thanks, Louis.
We'll go ahead and take our next question from Nick Lyall with Societe Generale.
Yes, good morning everybody. Could I go back to the wholesale strategy please, Mike? Because I mean there's risks with this as well. So Are you confident you can protect the high ARPU retail subs if you were to do that? Have you thought through that yet?
Obviously, you have, but have you could you share with us some thoughts From the UK business on that. And any conversations at all with Ofcom? And could I just clarify when you're talking about wholesale, You are including the cable HFC network to wholesale as well or is it just the incremental fiber parts of the network? Thanks very much.
Look, those are really good questions, Nick. And I'd love to walk you through the exhaustive amount of analysis that we've done at both the Liberty and the Virgin Video 2 and Telefonica levels around all of this, but I prefer not to. I think it's safe to say that if we were to enter into any sort of wholesale provider arrangements Or consider that as a long term strategy, then we would have thought through the impact on ARPU, The regulatory impact and the best technology solutions to achieve that. Better to not get in Too much detail today. The announcement is plenty to digest for investors and we want to focus on explaining how we got there and how we'll achieve that.
But I think it's safe to say we have lots of time to think through how we exploit and monetize that commitment beyond the benefits to our own business. And I would just give us a little time to finish those considerations and you will certainly have plenty to talk about over the course of the next few quarters. Sorry to be evasive, I just think it's a slippery slope. We could get into a lot of detail. It's probably not helpful here.
No, understood. Thanks, Mike.
You got it.
Will take our next question from Steve Malcolm with Redburn.
Yes. Good afternoon, guys. Just on The U. K. Fiber plans.
Can you maybe just help us understand what is so unique about the U. K. Network? I should know this after €1,000,000 doing this job, but I honestly don't. That allows you to build at such a low cost relative to other networks.
So I know yesterday was €6,000 The The fact that it's fully ducted, I presume you don't think there's any construction required at all, is that you can blow the fibers directly into all the ducts for all the customers. And I guess alongside that, the Project Lightning experience hasn't been seamless in the last 6 years. So maybe what lessons have you learned? What confidence can you give us So the targets you set out yesterday are going to be the numbers you actually do. That would be great.
Thanks.
Well, Lutz, you can prepare and or Enrique a a little bit more color on why the we believe the numbers to be, of course, accurate and as you point out, are less expensive than our peers. Let me just make a comment on Project Lightning. We have been we've built 2,500,000 homes at this point. I think the your reference to slippage goes back 5 years maybe, 4 years, quite a while ago. Since that early moment, and I would describe that as a very early moment, it has been a machine and we have been are extremely effective, consistent and predictable in our execution of network expansion in the UK.
Our returns and our penetration rates have been exactly what we said they would be and our capital costs have come down consistently as we access PIA and we get smarter and better at executing on this is a large construction project together with suppliers. So I don't think we have any I think we are as active and successful and predictable as anybody in the UK market and you can just talk to the suppliers that we work with to confirm that. Our credibility or ability to achieve this in my opinion is sound and really not that questionable. But Lutz or Enrique, you're welcome to dive a little bit more into the detail around the £100 if you'd like to.
Yes, maybe we don't need to start, but yes, exactly.
Sure. I'll just make a couple of comments. First of all, The number is obviously an average over quite a few different scenarios. But in the case of this will operate this project. The majority of the process actually uses our existing DUCs and our existing fiber deep DOCSIS network allows us to really focus the upgrade capital will be on a significant portion of the passive part of the network.
There are construction you're asking your question, is it because there's no Construction costs, there are construction costs, but it's significantly lower than when you're building brand new territory like we are today doing And then the final point I would make is that the significant commonality between both the technology as well as The construction mechanisms between Lightning and what we'll be doing in this upgrade. So we're pretty confident that we understand the process and that we will hit those targets.
Follow-up, Mike, I think you said that Openreach is now passing like 10% to 15% of your network with fiber. Can you maybe just update us on what you're seeing, where they have passed Are you seeing any particular change in the sort of customer onboarding and offboarding dynamics in those areas?
Lutz, you can address that.
Yes. So I mean, you've also seen, Steve, that these new wholesale prices, Right, I'll announce and we'll kick in. And for 1 gig, that is then £22. Today, Right. The fiber prices are very, very high, and we watch it very carefully.
But look at our net adds, so we don't see an impact at all at the moment. Will Will that stay the same? No. Because we think that, right, if prices for higher speeds will go down a bit, we would see a bit more competition here. But on the other hand side, like we have now more than 40% of our fixed customers having also mobile with us, And that will help us also protect our customers from churn.
The other point I'd make is, we are already 1 gig Pretty much and will be at the end of this year 1 gig capable across 100% of our subscriber base. It isn't as if BT or any Openreach customer will be providing a superior product It's really a me too product and we're going to have the advantage of being there first across the entirety of our footprint Majority of these operators because we're already there. This is what I meant when I said it's not a fair fight because if BT is building to get to 1 gig, we're already 1 gig. And we're just basically further supercharging our networks for the next 10 years by ensuring that we'll have symmetrical 10 gig when and if that market requires it. So hard to see us not being able to compete with any activity from BT or Openreach, given the fact that we're so far ahead of them as we sit here today, the 1 gig project.
Thank
you. We'll take our next question from Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark.
Thank you. Another angle on fiber, one of your large U. S. Peers is taking much more of a parallel network topology approach. It sounds like What you're doing is a little bit more complicated.
So using another Olympic analogy, I hope Enrique doesn't get the Simone Biles twisties on the execution because it sounds a little involved. But the other thing that was really interesting on your U. S. Peer was even though they have 1,000,000 homes passed, I mean, they didn't even call out The cost of operating simultaneously with over 1,000,000 homes passed because the cost on fiber were so low, albeit Less than 5% capacity. Can you talk about the cost savings on fiber?
I know sort of the dictum Some people as you're going to get about 30% reductions in consumer touch costs and related CapEx. And then secondly, on the Ventures portfolio, you've got a couple of things that I think the valuation you're carrying is probably pretty safe and sane. You got a couple of things that would probably have a lot of sort of Cathy Wood type appeal if there was a flotation, something like Formula E As well as the edge computing, could you talk specifically about some of the possibilities around Formula E and whether it's A complement or a displacement to Formula 1? Thank you.
Sure, Matt. I think Enrique would echo the comment that a fiber network could easily and should reduce operating costs over the long haul. I think it's important to point out though in the UK, we're not decommissioning the cable network. We're going to continue to utilize the DOCSIS 3.1 plant that take us all the way to 2.2 gigabytes. So we'll be at 2 gig pretty shortly here on the DOCSIS plant And we'll continue to utilize that plant wherever and whenever necessary with the fiber really being an overlay as opposed to a replacement of the coax network or the HFC component of the network anyway.
They'll share tons of fiber To the cabinet, if you will. But beyond that, we'll keep the HFC network viable. So the cost will be there, so it will be cost savings long term and CapEx savings long term. But I think you have to remember that those annual cost savings may not be quite as significant. On the venture side, there's lots of assets within ventures that could easily find their way into the hands of other strategic owners, IPOs, etcetera.
We have at least 8 to 10 unicorns in the tech portfolio, which is is about $800,000,000 of $3,000,000,000 And we have some relatively large businesses in the content portfolio. You mentioned 1, Formula E, but We have a stake in ITV, which we have a relatively low basis in, all three media and some other assets. And so each of those have their own sort of storyline and opportunity. Formula E is doing terrific. It's in its 7th season, coming back strong from COVID With some really exciting things happening with the car and the technology next year.
We've got Mercedes, Porsche, all the right manufacturers getting behind it. And the product just gets better and better with I think we've got another 18 years of exclusivity with FIA on Electric car racing, so it's going to be terrific to see how that platform evolves over the long haul. And we're always looking at ways to will help our portfolio companies achieve their goals, whether that's through flocations or mergers or whatever, fundraising. So stay tuned, we'll give you more information on those assets as they evolve.
Over time, are you more likely to have the mobile traffic on the HSC network of the emergence of some new technologies from Cisco and others or is that going to be on the fiber network, if you don't mind my asking?
Well, we do backhaul today and Lutz can speak about that. We provide quite a bit of backhaul services to almost all the operators in the UK, including will do so for 2, typically utilizing fiber. But I don't know if there's some other element to that Enrique or Lutz, you want You can do it over both, but generally speaking, these circuits are fiber.
Yes. The mobile traffic is mostly on the hardware network and we'll continue to grow in that direction. There may be opportunistic cases in which We use a portion of the HFC network, but it's really the F of HFC that is being over a few.
Great. Thanks Mike. Thanks Enrique.
Yes. Our next question comes from Andrew Beale with Arete Research.
Hi. I just wonder if
we can develop the discussion about longer term fiber cost savings in Virgin. I mean, as you blow or pull the fiber alongside existing HFC network or coax, I guess you can choose Whether you serve each existing or new customer via DOCSIS or Fiverr. And then longer term, you've got this OpEx saving when you switch the DOCSIS off. So what is your thinking at the moment? Will you put all the new customers or upgraders on fiber or do you just do it for customers seeking a certain high speed tier Or symmetrical or other services.
And then how many years off are you thinking it is that you actually switch off DOCSIS in an area that you've previously passed with fiber. I guess I'm just really asking about the pacing of variable CapEx by replacing The coax drops with fiber versus the long term OpEx savings opportunity and what you're thinking is that?
No, it's the right question and I think it's a little early for us to provide any guidance around what percent of customers will require or want a fiber connection And the cost implications of that, but you should assume we're working that through. We have worked that through, but in terms of disclosing that, I think it's a little Sure. I don't Enrique and Lutz can chime in here. I think the cable network will exist for quite some time and will provide us with a seamless ability to serve customers who don't require Either the benefits of a fiber network or the speed and capacity of a fiber network, that's a nice luxury to have, but we can get people up to 2 gigabytes on the existing plant. So that's the basic strategy.
As we move forward here and the idea of a Further disclosure on Virgin Media O2's plan when it's developed, maybe we'll do that. We'll take some time on one of our future quarterly calls and really dive deep. It's a little early to do that for the public today, but I think you're on the right point in terms of what percent of customers will require a drop And a new CPE, how quickly will that happen? You can make your own assumptions about that. We certainly have.
But I think it's too early for us to put that in the public. Yes.
I mean, so first of all, we are in the luxury position, Right, that we can plan the migration predominantly customer demand driven. And that means the customer then wants to have Higher speed than 2.2 gigabits per second, right? I mean, Mike said at the beginning, today, a Virgin Media customer is using 200 Embit per second, then it's 2.2 gigabit per second, right? So that will take some time. That's number 1.
Number 2, we have the luxury to have Well, in one area, we can have one home then on fiber and the next home we can have on DOCSIS 3.1, right? So we are not forced to really migrate entire regions onto fiber. And I think number 3, obviously, over time, we want to have a balanced approach to really use the capacity of the fiber network in balance with the 3.1 DOCSIS Right. So these are the factors. And as Max said earlier, right, the biggest driver for us is not the cost saving We're switching off the network, right?
When you sit on a Cooper network and end of story is 80 meg, then you have to think about switch off. When you sit on a DOCSIS network. And today, we see easily we get to 2.2 gigabit per second, then you absolutely want to leverage both networks. What's Driving it is the business opportunities across consumer. B2B, huge growth opportunity.
And when you think about our market below 10%. We have now a 5 gs network and a fiber network. Lots of things are possible and then the wholesale opportunity. So I think stay tuned on that. Okay.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from James Ratcliffe with Evercore ISI.
Hi. 2, if I could. First of all, I noticed you boosted the synergy expectations in Switzerland and give us some additional cost to achieve, how does that affect the timeframe for seeing the cost to achieve versus synergies put positive in that market. And secondly, just going back to the buyback, can you talk about the thought process around doing this as a will be the percentage of market cap rather than say a fixed dollar amount or free cash flow plus a given dollar amount because And this has the effect of the more stock goes out, the more you'd be buying back.
Thanks.
Yes. I'll take the buyback question, obviously. And Andre, if you want to prepare some thoughts around the Swiss question. I want to make sure I'm following what you're saying, James. If we're let me clarify what we're committing to, which is to repurchase 10% of the shares outstanding beginning of the year regardless of price over these next 24 months.
So the amount of the buyback or the dollar amount of that spend will vary depending upon the price. That said, it doesn't mean we couldn't accelerate that if the price were lower to perhaps take anticipate one of your follow-up questions. But we would continue to commit to that if the price were higher. And therefore, it seems to us that we're investors now will be able to incorporate into their thinking around stock price and growth at minimum of a 10% will be an improvement in the share price, we hope based upon the buyback commitment we've made. So it seems to us to be an easier and more predictable And more beneficial approach to buyback, meaning that we're committing to that 10% number.
And If it were a dollar figure, hard to know what that impact would be, right? Got it.
Yes. Andre?
Yes. Well, on your question, does the higher synergy Expectation have an impact on the timescale of the realization. No, it doesn't. So we actually have seen that some of The assumption that we have taken on the realization of moving customers over to own infrastructure from whole by infrastructure, were more conservative than what we think is now realistic to achieve, and that does not really change the time frame. In fact, we have seen some synergies Coming in even a bit earlier, you've seen in the presentation that we were alluding to the MVNO migration being executed ahead of schedule.
And overall, I would say we are rather ahead of schedule than behind, so no real change to the timescale.
Thank
you.
Will go ahead and take our next question from go for it.
No, go ahead operator. I wasn't sure what's happening. Go ahead.
Will go ahead and take our next question from Ulrich Freight with Jefferies.
Thanks very much. I have
a question maybe probably to a lot. Does the fiber upgrade plan require In footprint share gains in the consumer market, I understand there are opportunities beyond that. But in terms of literally the consumer market, Is there an element here that you think you can up the share, the market share? Thank you.
Well, I mean, we are currently winning market share, right, with a speed advantage. And we have not made any planning yet what kind of market share we are planning to win over the next 10 years. And we haven't justified the plan by a win of market share in consumer. Right, I said early on, we have just started now after Committing the budget for 2021 to come up with a 3 year plan and beyond, and then we are working on that. But it's is definitely an opportunity to keep our customers and also to increase share of wallet, so ARPU per with our customers.
If we keep winning market share as we do today, give us some time to figure that out. Thank
you. I'd like to now pass the call back to Mike Fries.
Okay. Thanks. Listen, I appreciate you staying on with us. I know there's other calls happening today, so you're probably already on your way. But look at 4 key takeaways from my point of view, growth continues in our FMC Champions and synergies are just now starting show up, so that's going to be a positive tailwind here in the medium term.
We're excited to start providing greater transparency around our network strategies with the UK being the first of those announcements. And I can assure you, we're looking at these things through an offensive and accretive lens, and we have the luxury of doing that because we have such a fiber rich network to begin with and a strong broadband base as we sit here today. Pay attention to the ventures portfolio. It's growing in value and significance, and we'll keep you posted on the Polish deal, which is just another reaffirmation of the private market value of our businesses. And lastly, we're excited about the buyback commitment.
It's a strong statement from us. I think that's something you can take to the bank, if you will, this year and for the next 2 years, and that's got to be useful for investors who want to see us deploy capital in one of the most obvious places and that's our own share. So appreciate you joining. We'll speak to you soon. Have a great August.
Bye bye.
Is available. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global's 2nd Quarter 2021 Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website. There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.