Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global’s fourth quarter 2020 investor call.

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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 in Liberty Global’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent filed Forms 10-Q and 10-K 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 such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries..

first, building FMC champions in our core markets, we’ve done that; second, opportunistically investing in ventures that are both strategic and financially rewarding, and you are seeing the fruits of some of that work right now; and third, buying back our shares which, obviously, we believe are undervalued relative to almost any measure.

I’m excited to take your questions, but first, over to you, Charlie..

Thanks Mike. Turning to our consolidated numbers, I’m starting on a page entitled, Underlying Revenue Stable. Total group revenue saw a decline of 0.5% in Q4, resulting in full year decline of 1.5%.

We estimate the negative impacts of COVID to be around $54 million in Q4 and around $200 million for the full year, which negatively impacted our growth rate by around 1.8%. Without that, we believe the group would have seen positive rebased revenue growth for the full year.

On the right-hand side of the page, for each of the last three quarters you will see the five key areas impacted by COVID. In general, COVID impacted our business much less in Q4 than it did when the pandemic first hit in Q2.

The impact of not having access to premium sports in Q2 was $34 million; however as sports started to return by Q4, the downside was only around $7 million.

Handset sales and roaming revenues were impacted by the pandemic and we estimate contributed to a $16 million drag in Q4, while the impacts on our broadcasting businesses was around $6 million for the quarter. There was some impact on our B2B businesses, we estimate around $22 million in Q4, but it was largely due to reduced sales.

Fortunately, to date we haven’t seen a material impact on bad debt and late charges on either our B2B or consumer businesses. On the next slide, we provide details of our adjusted EBITDA. For the full year 2020, we delivered minus-3.9% adjusted EBITDA growth, which was in line with our expectations.

As we called out in our Q3 results presentation, Virgin Media declined 11% rebased versus Q4 of 2019.

This was driven by $7 million of costs related to the O2 merger and some other growth investments, particularly $21 million in the accelerated digitization and on-shoring of our custom content platforms as well as an $18 million increase in marketing, which did result in accelerated subscriber growth.

The remaining difference versus Q4 of 2019 was the impact of end of contract [indiscernible], network taxes, and deferment of our price rise from Q4 to Q1 2021. Swiss trends continued to gradually improve with a 7.9% decline in Q4, partially explained by a 4% drag from $10 million of costs to capture [indiscernible] synergies.

While Sunrise’s rebased has not improved since completion [indiscernible] financials, the standalone business is reporting around 2% full year growth based on the historical IFRS reporting policy.

Turning to operating free cash flow, we delivered 5% operating free cash flow growth for the full year, which is in line with our guidance of mid-single digit growth. This is despite $26 million of cost to capture, which is equivalent to more than 1% of growth.

Our capital intensity declined to 22.5% in 2020 or 19.6% excluding capex related to Project Lightning, and but for cost of capture in Switzerland, all markets would have returned positive OFCF growth year-on-year.

The standout was [indiscernible] de-consolidated joint venture in the Netherlands, which grew 9% year-on-year, delivering $1.2 billion of operating free cash flow.

Turning to our 2020 free cash flow results, we delivered 39% growth or $300 million compared to 2019 and reported $1.1 billion of consolidated free cash flow, ahead of our $1 billion guidance.

This is despite some currency headwinds versus guidance assumptions and a $6 million drag from working capital which we generally believe [indiscernible] a telecom company such as ourselves. Our cash flow was further suppressed by the $329 million of capital expenditures related to our U.K. network expansion, Project Lightning.

On the page entitled, 2021 Outlook, we provide details of our expectations for our key assets going forward. Given that we fully expect our U.K.

business will be deconsolidated into a joint venture by midyear and that Vodafone Ziggo and Telenet already provide standalone guidance, going forward we’ll provide our key financials guidance not on a group consolidated basis but for each business unit.

At the group level, we’ll be guiding only to consolidated free cash flow, which we expect to grow more than 25% to $1.35 billion for 2021 based on the assumption that the JV closes at midyear. In the U.K.

and Ireland, we expect to return to top line growth despite an increased year-end impact from end of contract [indiscernible], although cost of capture synergies will weigh on adjusted EBITDA and OFCF growth. For the full year, we expect standalone [indiscernible] to decline low single digits across both metrics.

We also expect a return to revenue growth in Switzerland for the combined UPC-Sunrise business, though expect a low single digit adjusted EBITDA decline and a mid-single digit OFCF decline, and that’s because we’re spending over Fr 150 million of costs to capture synergies, but on the underlying business we think there will be growth.

Telenet, our Belgian operation, has garnered 1% to 2% adjusted EBITDA growth and continued free cash flow growth, expected to generate €420 million to €440 million.

Vodafone Ziggo, our Dutch JV [indiscernible] 1% to 3% adjusted EBITDA growth and will increase year-over-year cash distributions to shareholders [indiscernible] range of €550 million to €650 million, or $677 million to $800 million. With that, Operator, over to questions..

[Operator instructions] All right, we’ll take the first question from Robert--oh, excuse me, James Ratzer--pardon me. It is going to be from Robert Grindle with Deutsche Bank. .

Okay, that’s me, I think. Hi there, how’s it going? May I ask about the U.K.? I saw the strong Lightning take-up stats, but the Lightning build was lower than the previous three years.

Is that COVID or are you hanging fire a bit pending the O2 merger, or I think you mentioned in the slides that passive infrastructure access is not really available at the moment. Is that what you’re waiting for, and what’s the prognosis there? Thank you. .

Well, I’ll just make a couple comments and then Lutz, you can work a more detailed answer. If you look at the last four or five years, we’ve always built between 400,000 and 500,000 homes per year. Last year, we did 426,000, and we’ve done 2.5 million to date. I wouldn’t read anything into it.

It’s more about just optimizing our overall financial picture. Could we have built a few more? Yes. Could we have built a few less? Probably. The PIA is reducing our cost pretty considerably, so below £600, which is a great thing, and the more we use of that, of course, it could accelerate both the capital we spend and the number of homes we build.

It’s all good news there. There’s really nothing negative. Our coverage is growing, our penetration remains strong, our ARPUs are strong, and the returns are high, so the Lightning Project as it sits today is in great shape.

Certainly when the merger closes--sorry, the joint venture closes, we will sit down with Telefonica when we’re allowed to and really re-evaluate the entire picture around our fixed networks in the U.K., specifically the pace of Lightning build, secondly our broader ambition to expand in the network beyond our Lightning footprint aggressively, the path we’ll take to 10 gig, will we bring in financial partners, how will we accretively and aggressively take advantage of our network leadership in this market and ensure we remain network leaders for some time.

That’s our real opportunity here.

Any other color, Lutz?.

You said it all, basically. I think the only thing I would add is that the Lightning team, on top to the network expansion for homes, is also now going to connect more base stations for 5G.

We closed two big deals, one with Vodafone, one with [indiscernible] 3G, and obviously here also you see now an acceleration of really connecting circuits, so if you take both into account, then it runs at pace and, as Mike said, I think we have to review the strategy together then after the approval with Telefonica. .

Thank you..

All right, once again that is star, one to ask a question. If you find your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star, two. The next question is from Christian Fangmann with HSBC..

Yes, great. Thank you. Hi guys. I have actually a question on Switzerland. It looks like a good outcome back to broadband growth in that market on an underlying basis at UPC standalone. My question is more on the integration costs and the phasing - you mentioned Fr 150 million.

Can you maybe give us a split between opex and capex here, and also what you expect in terms of synergies already in 2020 and the phasing over the next few years, just broadly speaking that we can model it properly? I think a bit more color or guidance around that would be nice..

Yes, André is on the call - I can ask him to address to some extent. We’re being obviously a little careful about annual synergy expectations, but I’ll tell you that in 2021, the synergies are expected to be relatively nominal, I think maybe in the Fr 30 million range, something like that, against the Fr 150 million cost of capture.

But it ramps pretty quickly, so I think in 2022 it’s four or five times that number and then it grows ratably to the 2024, 2025 time frame, and it’s not going to look materially different than the Belgian synergy model or the Dutch synergy model in terms of how much is revenue, how much is cost related, and how much is cost savings based on a 2020 cost base, and it’s about 85/15 - you know, 15% revenues, and those are really in the later years.

It’s a conservative synergy gate in our view. André, I don’t know what other color we’re providing on those sorts of numbers, but I’ll let you wrap that up..

Well, I think you outlined it well. I think on the cost of capture, of course, we tried to be pretty front-loaded. We are moving fast, integration is progressing quite well, and obviously some of the opex stuff is going first whereas some of the investments are coming later on as we go through it.

I would expect that the largest part of the total cost of capture should be done by the end of ’22, and in terms of synergy [indiscernible], of course it’s always a bit of a question mark around the revenue synergies, how quickly they’re going to run through, but as Mike pointed out, I would re-confirm the shape of the trajectory..

Thank you very much..

All right, the next question is from James Ratzer with New Street Research. .

Yes, thank you very much indeed. Question for me really was around your cash return thoughts from her. Firstly on the buyback, I noticed the pace of that seemed to slow in the fourth quarter, so I was wondering if there was any logic behind that and should we be expecting the pace of buyback to be accelerated during the first half of this year.

Given the strong cash flow guidance that you’re giving and the rate of buyback, you’ll still end this year at the current run rate with well over $3 billion of cash on the balance sheet, so I was wondering if you could give any further thoughts around timing of that potentially being returned to shareholders, or other uses of that capital.

Thank you..

We can’t identify any other uses of the capital beyond what I’ve said generally, which is we remain opportunistic around strategic transactional ideas that might occur in our core markets, and maybe continued modest investment in ventures.

There’s nothing else that’s jumping out at us at this point that would require meaningful amounts of capital, so buybacks remain front and center.

And as you’ve said, just looking at last year, the number that we started out at a normal pace, and when of course the stock declined, we ramped up and bought most of our stock in that period of time, Q2, a bit of Q3.

From our perspective, we’ll do the same this year, so I think the end of the year was a bit of an odd period, both related to where we were in our 10b5-1 plan and our material [indiscernible] information and having just announced, or about to announce the increased authorization, we wanted to get through the year with what remaining we had.

I think you should expect us to look at the situation dynamically, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we ended up buying more stock in the first half than the second half because we believe our operating and financial story continues to look better and better.

Let’s see how things evolve, but we’ve got the full $1 billion available, we have been spending more daily in this year than we were in the fourth quarter, and that shouldn’t surprise you, but let’s see how things evolve. I can’t be more specific than that, James. .

Great, okay. Clear, thank you..

All right, the next question is from Michael Bishop with Goldman Sachs..

Thanks very much. I’d like to just try and to pull together a couple of things on the free cash flow guide. It feels like the step-up to 1.35 is largely driven by the higher Vodafone Ziggo distribution, and then obviously the growth and the accretion that Sunrise brings.

Is there anything else you’d call out as driving that 1.35, given it looks like you’re guiding the operating cash flow will be modestly down for a couple of the assets, like the U.K.

and Switzerland? Then if I could ask a more forward-looking question on the cash flow, which is related, it sounds like we should take the 1.35 and then effectively if you want to think about that on a run rate basis going forward, you’ll be spending at least Fr 150 million on integration costs in Switzerland, £15 million in the U.K., but then you’ll probably spend some for the second half as the deal in the U.K.

closes, so simplistically, should we think about the underlying cash flow being quite a bit above $1.5 billion? Thanks very much..

Good questions.

Charlie?.

I think you’re quite right - we saw the acceleration in Vodafone [indiscernible] continued through cash machine. The strong acceleration [indiscernible] in Telenet based on that guidance. In the U.K. it’s more partly until we close the deal, but also because of the cost of capture and also the Lightning build.

Again, I would emphasize that conceptually, you could switch off the Lightning construction capex and that would increase our free cash flow pretty materially if we wanted to [indiscernible].

Then in Switzerland, I think you rightly point out that we’re getting some good free cash flow, and that’s not least because we are getting some [indiscernible] synergies as a result of the transaction, so I think the message is that we’ve got a real cash flow machine, and I think Mike made the point about the synergies, there’s a lot more to go from here.

We would expect continued free cash flow growth as we monetize those synergies, as well as we see continued good operational performance, particularly in the turnaround in the U.K..

And as I said in my remarks, which you would already know, Michael, the free cash flow per share figure would be even obviously more robust on a growth rate basis, just given our new purchase of 8, 9, 10% of our market cap every year, so if you’re looking at it integrated, the free cash flow underlying, the operating free cash flow story, as Charlie said and as you pointed out, is strong, and then we were able to accelerate that on a free cash flow per share basis, just by virtue of buyback activity..

Thanks.

Am I right, so the second half of the--sorry, just to follow up on the second half of the year in the U.K., so I’m right to think that that will be effectively a small net cash outflow also in the 1.35, because [indiscernible] your integration will be more than the synergies that you deliver?.

Well--go ahead, Charlie..

I was going to say, the way we actually look at it is actually broadly flat, because [indiscernible] seasonality in the free cash flow in the U.K., so--and again, we think we think the deal will close, we’ll give you updated assumptions when we close it because obviously we don’t have a lot of insight on what’s going with O2, but our best guess is that if we don’t close or close, it’s probably about the same free cash flow.

There’s a lot of variables in that assumption -- you know, [indiscernible]..

You’re coming through a little bit fuzzy, Charlie, but I think the point was the guidance is provided assuming that the deal doesn’t close, just to be clear for folks and give them a baseline on top of which they can overlay the JV, and as Charlie indicated, interestingly whether we consolidate Virgin Media for the entire year or just half the year, interestingly the free cash flow number won’t be meaningfully different, because we’ll be then distributing that cash in the second half of the year back up to the parent.

I think you can look at it either way, Michael, and you’re not going to get a materially different number, if that makes sense..

Yes, that’s helpful. Thanks a lot..

All right, the next question is from Nick Lyall with SocGen..

Good afternoon, everybody. Just one on Switzerland, Mike, if I could. The [indiscernible] still looks a bit tricky.

You talked about discounts, I think in the statement, again on the front book, so is that doing anything in terms of your plans for price changes? Could you maybe just discuss at what point you think the new company can cope with price changes, and also what are the plans for the brands in Switzerland as well, please? Thanks..

Sure, in fact André, why don’t I let you take both of those since you’re running it. Go ahead..

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question.

I would say overall, yes, the market is quite competitive, and there’s quite a lot of tension on the front book; however, I would say that those businesses, Sunrise and UPC operating still majorly independent in Q4 have seen the best quarters for the year, not only for this year but for the last three years probably, so that is showing that we have a very competitive offering.

Now looking forward for us, of course combining fixed mobile convergence is the name of the game, and we have still a lot of opportunity on both businesses to actually drive more value to our customers while not necessarily destroying value but rather creating value, so [indiscernible].

In regards to brand consolidation, that’s something we are currently looking into.

Most likely we’ll probably operate with two brands - we have seen that working out quite successfully in the past couple of quarters using Sunrise, and it’s probably [indiscernible] we will embrace also for the combined business, but we haven’t taken a final decision on what those brands are going to be..

Okay, thanks very much..

The next question is from David Wright with Bank of America..

Yes, good afternoon--good morning, I should say. Thank you.

Just on the U.K., I really don’t want to downplay the achievements of Lutz and team, but a lot of the commercial momentum has come with the delay in the price rise, so I guess the question is to what extent is that a factor, and as you bring pricing into the customer base end of Q1, early Q2 I believe, how do you think those KPIs could respond? Is the commercial activity driven more by price right now, do you think, or more by the quality of service and the ramping of the product? Thanks..

I’d just say, and then I’ll let Lutz provide a bit more color, this began building early in the year, David, so as you look at the U.K. broadband adds, first quarter was 80,000, I think; second quarter, 33,000; third quarter, 47,000; fourth quarter, 54,000.

It’s our view that that is an undeniable trend regardless of any announcements that may or may not have been made on price increases.

As I mentioned in my remarks, lots of positive things driving that, and Lutz, why don’t you flush that out a bit more?.

Yes, exactly. We put together a strategy to get back to sustainable growth in 2019, fixed mobile convergence one, a lot of innovation like Mike has already called out, better base management, on-shoring of customer service, a huge effort in digital, and so this has led to reduced churn and increased sales.

You’re right - obviously waiving the price rise in 2020 has helped here, but if we would have done one, the numbers would be a bit lower, the net add growth, however it would be still substantially higher than 2019. Maybe I’ll give you a bit of flavor of the price rise, how it’s going.

We’ve got a very rational reaction from the public, so in the press and in customers it was well received. We’re in the middle of it at the moment, and it seems that the demand for higher speeds in the pandemic especially is increasing.

When you have kids doing homeschooling, parents working and stuff, you need higher speeds, and so we’re offering that, so therefore obviously Q1 net adds while doing a price rise cannot be higher than the 55,000 broadband adds that you have seen in Q4, however I would not be surprised if we would have still positive net adds in Q1. .

Can I just ask as a follow-on, the commentary made on the demand for higher speeds perhaps lagging from COVID, etc., also you have some competitors announcing fairly substantial price rises in the U.K. too. After a couple of choppy years, do you feel like the U.K.

market is returning to more rationality, perhaps supported by that COVID effect?.

Yes, well I think all the players have big investments on one hand, right, in next generation networks on the fixed side and 5G on the mobile side. Sky does also a big investment on the content side, so that’s one.

Second, usage has increased dramatically, as Mike has pointed out, so that means also obviously that all needs some funding, and therefore I think price rises have been done by almost everybody, right? BT CPI-plus 3.9, I think Vodafone the same.

I think just today, Sky has announced their price rise for this year as well, and we have done it in January, so I would say on price rise, very rational and I think also however well received by the customer, as I said before.

There is still higher competition on the acquisition side, right, so here prices, if you compare price development for, for instance, products like in the 60 meg space, prices are lower, so that is the dynamic. We haven’t followed that so much as Virgin Media and we get our fair share..

Very good, thank you..

Yes, by the way, the prices are lower in those lower tiers, but we’re actually offering generally faster speeds, so BT might offer a 38-meg or Sky might offer a 60-meg product, we’re at 100 meg for that same customer--target customer base, so our price per megabit, if that’s something that you want to look at, is much more attractive, and as people get smarter and more focused on the broadband product, that’s not even a relevant stat.

We’re always faster, even if the prices are comparable..

Thank you..

The next question is from Polo Tang with UBS. .

Yes, hi. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one is for Mike. You talked earlier bout how you’d be busy on the strategic front in 2021, so can you maybe just elaborate on those comments? Were you referring to completing the U.K.

deal, or are you doing new additional things that you’d maybe give us some sense in terms of the areas that you’re looking at? And I just have a follow-up question which is really just about Sky.

Dana Strong is obviously taking over as CEO of Sky, and she obviously knows Virgin Media very well, so do you see scope for closer cooperation with Sky going forward, for example maybe Sky could invest alongside you guys in terms of a fiber footprint expansion, or maybe doing cable wholesale? Thanks..

I’ll take those. First with respect to Dana, of course she is very well known to us.

She worked for us, for me for over two decades, and I consider her to be an outstanding executive, so obviously we’re happy for her and I think it helps for us to have somebody in that seat who we know well, who knows us well, and I think who Comcast knows well, so it’s a good decision and we’re--of course we’re in touch with her and we’ll be very close on a number of things.

She’s also quite deliberate and careful, so she’ll take her time to evaluate opportunities in the marketplace.

Having said that, I have no reason to believe she wouldn’t be just as strategic as Jeremy was around their long-term strategy in this marketplace and what options they have to secure owner economics or reduce costs to serve, and all the things that anybody who’s building a business or rebuilding a business in some cases would look to do.

I couldn’t be happier with her and we’re proud of her; on the other hand, I think it does give us a great dialog and great opportunity to continue to talk about each of our strategic futures here.

We can’t do much until the deal is approved, as you can imagine, and you’re unlikely to read or hear anything between now and then; but it wouldn’t surprise me if we re-engage on a number of topics with Sky who are a very important partner for us in this market.

On the M&A side, the strategic front, I wasn’t referring to anything specific, but clearly if I go through those three buckets again, core markets, ventures and buybacks, our core markets, I think we’ve done exactly what we said we would do.

In the last five years, we’ve done something like $80 billion of--bigger, actually, $80 billion-plus of transactions allowing us to exit markets at double-digit multiples where we didn’t have scale, and bed down markets for fixed mobile convergence, becoming a champion in markets where we did have scale.

I think the way we’ve done it depends on the market - we either exited, bought or merged, and we think in all cases we’ve done the right thing, so we now have the number one or two player in these markets and that gives the scale to be, I would say, opportunistic and creative.

If you’re now the number two player in each of these markets relative to the incumbent, you’re in a different position when you look at those core markets strategically, and you could imagine what this might include.

The markets that we haven’t yet done anything in, Ireland and Poland for example, of course we’re going to continue to evaluate what the right long-term future for those markets is in terms of their strategic footprint and whether there’s a fixed mobile opportunity, etc., so you should assume that that’s high on our list.

It would be surprising to me if we ended 2021 without continued transformation even in those two markets, whatever that might look like. The other thing you might have heard me reference indirectly is that we are really excited about the infrastructure space.

Not surprisingly, we sit on massive infrastructure ourselves, both fiber-based, we’ve got towers directly and indirectly, we have real estate which Charlie and his team have done a great job extracting property assets from joint ventures and opcos, allowing us to look at the future of edge computing, so you should assume that we are being about as creative and opportunistic as we can be in infrastructure.

We’re not going to go compete with the big players [indiscernible], that’s not necessarily what I’m referring to, but there are going to be opportunities for us to partner, raise capital and monetize, and that will keep us busy because those are--you know, we know the underlying value of our networks is significant and there is massive amounts of money looking to invest in those networks, so we’ll be creative to see if there’s ways for us to create value.

We definitely do, Polo - you know that. Anything we would do, though, would be accretive to our base case plans, our guidance, whatever you might be referring to at the time, but it’s exciting to me and something that we’ll be working on closely in 2021..

Clear, thanks..

We’ll take the next question from Steve Malcolm with Redburn..

Yes, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the question. I’ll try and go for a couple if I can, they’re quite big ones. First just on Vodafone Ziggo, I guess paradoxically it’s still bringing in the best financial numbers in the group, but the operational KPIs are amongst the weakest. You’ve lost 60,000-odd RGs in the last couple of quarters.

Do you feel that you’ve got the balance right there between volume and price, particularly as KPN ramps up its fiber build over the next three, four, five years? Interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Then just swinging back to the U.K., can you just help us understand the evolution of the [indiscernible] through the year? Obviously you’ve had best tariff modifications, stick the price rise, you get the price rise in the first quarter, best tariff begins to lap, I guess through the back end of the year. Can you maybe get that U.K.

offer back to flat? How should we think about the progress for that number through 2021? Thank you..

Steve, you were moving pretty quick on the U.K. question. Could you repeat that, just a bit more slowly? Not all of it, just the main portion..

Yes, so I just wanted to understand how we should think about the evolution of the U.K. ARPU through 2021. I think you were down something like 4% in Q4. You had best tariff [indiscernible], you skipped the price rise, you get the price rise in Q1 back end, you begin to lap the best tariff impact through the second half of the year.

Just trying to understand whether you think you can get that number back to stable in terms of volume growth, but the ARPU picture is a bit blurry [indiscernible]. Thank you..

Okay Lutz, do you want to tackle the ARPU question, give your two cents on that? I could provide some color too..

Yes, so you call it yourself the key lever, so our price rise would give us a good tailwind to get the ARPU growth again. On the other hand, there is USCN [ph] and ADTN, right, average [indiscernible] which hasn’t really kicked in into 2020, but which will kick in, in 2021.

In our plan, we are careful, so we have contributed quite some revenue loss to ADTN, so therefore we think we are more coming to [indiscernible] into ’22 rather than ’21. It won’t shrink a lot but it might be a little less. It all depends on customer reaction on ADTN..

In the Dutch market, I think [indiscernible] and the team, and Charlie, you can jump in here too, have it figured out pretty well.

Clearly it’s a competitive market and KPN has made announcements about getting to roughly 50% reach with fiber, which we always assumed would be the case, but we’ve now got one gig everywhere, 6 million homes and are marketing aggressively, so I think this is just a breather, if you will.

The synergies and the execution have been intense, the rollout of new products has been successful. I think ’21 is not indicative as we look at it of the longer term opportunity in the marketplace, and I think the guidance just reflects a bit of a breather, if you will, not necessarily a discernible trend over the next three years.

I have confidence in their ability to optimize price volume to look at this market dynamically. They’re already--I mean, if you just compare them to KPN in 2020, which probably many of you do, it’s not a very fair comparison. They’ve had an incredible year relative to KPN in terms of net adds, in terms of pretty much--almost any metric.

I think we grew revenue 2% and EBITDA 6%; KPN went back 4%, I think 4.5%, and we had about 270,000 mobile net adds and they had 55, their broadband result was worse. But as with any market, you’re going to have ebbs and flows. KPN is a good operator, they’re not going to be down and out forever.

Everybody comes back punching, so that’s the nature of a competitive marketplace and I have confidence that this management team has a good strategy in place for the longer term, wouldn’t say the medium term, and any one year won’t be indicative of what you should expect.

Any color on that, Charlie?.

I’d agree. The only thing I’d say, they’ve done a great job on B2B. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’ve moved their market share up very materially on B2B, and there’s still a lot of runway to go, so I actually think they’re doing a terrific job of execution, perhaps amongst the best in the group, so I’d concur with everything Mike said..

Okay, and especially [indiscernible].

Can you hear me?.

Yes, I think the question, Charlie, was the decision not to give revenue guidance at Vodafone [indiscernible]..

Vodafone, so is that just because of the breather that you’re talking about and getting some flexibility to respond to that situation?.

No, to be honest with you, revenue guidance in a world of COVID is not the easiest thing. I think we’d all have a lot more confidence in cash flow guidance, because who knows what’s the impact on sports and whatever. This company is performing well and I think you’ll see some very good results.

Management’s famously quite conservative, though he is putting pressure on the group, [indiscernible]..

Okay, thanks so much, guys..

You got it.

I think we’re at the mark here, Rick, or can we take another question or two?.

Last one..

Okay..

The last question is from Andrew Beale with Arete Research. .

Hi. I wanted to come back to Vodafone Ziggo again, actually, and just ask you about your background thinking around a possible IPO there.

Obviously you’ve just discussed the results in Holland, but I guess it’s a business that’s given you and continues to give you large dividends, so just wondering how you thought about the ongoing value from 50% ownership of those dividends in a business you like versus the opportunity to highlight equity value more broadly across your wider group operations, and obviously I appreciate you’ve got a partner there so there’s things you won’t be able to talk about, but any background around that thinking.

not just for Vodafone Ziggo but the sort of wider outlook for local IPOs..

one, regulatory, regulators are mostly focused on infrastructure and build-out, and they want to see companies in a fair bet environment where if they can invest the money, they get a return, it’s a good thing. You might even see further consolidation in mobile - we’ll see.

We’ve already pointed out how COVID can help those who are prepared with great products to grow, and consumption is never turning back. Consumption is going nowhere but up.

Multiples have been depressed for a period of time, so a lot of positive things in our sector, and of course we’re a bit of an outlier because we’re more entrepreneurial, more profitable, and more strategic than a lot of our peers.

But nonetheless, the sector in general is possibly due for a pretty good year here, and would it be an opportunity to look at listing? I would say possibly. It’s not up to use, we have to kind of--you know, we wouldn’t want to do that with a partner who was resistant to it.

Longer term, there are built-in provisions in these documents for a reason - each party can force an IPO, one party can force a sale of the company, and they’re in there for a reason because nobody knows what five years, six years will look like. We’re getting to those points, and so it’s going to be an interesting 24 months.

We’re a very solid partnership, we’ll have to come together and decide what’s the right outcome for each of us in these particular assets and markets, and I’m thrilled to be in that position with a business that’s actually hit the ball out of the park and achieved everything we thought it was going to achieve, so it’s all good news.

But as Charlie likes to say, it’s delivering cash to the parent, really meaningful cash, and that’s something you can bank on, almost.

As you look at our free cash flow story, that’s certainly an important piece to us, that business, and disrupting it or impacting the dividend or having our partnership be a bit ruffled, that’s not something we’re anxious to do. But keep your eyes on it, stay tuned.

The next 24 months, I think you’ll see activity on that front and we’ll certainly let you know when it happens..

Anyhow, I’ll close it out just briefly. Appreciate everybody joining the call.

We felt it was a difficult year for everyone on the planet, and we feel fortunate to have come through it with pretty strong operating and financial results, and as I mentioned in my remarks, results that mostly have continued through this year It wasn’t a one-off in our minds, there’s a lot of momentum going into 2021, and thus far we’re seeing that momentum continue, which is a really positive indicator for Q1.

Strategically, I think we’re focused on the right things. The ventures portfolio, give it a look. It’s not something we’re sharing with you because there’s nothing else to talk about. We really believe that there is underlying value, we’ve made smart investments.

These are investments that enable our opcos and our operating businesses mostly, and that’s something to be taken under consideration, and there could be more coming.

As ever, we’re working on the value gap, doing our best to both execute on the business but also be sure strategically and financially we’re making it clear to investors where we see the value in the company. Appreciate your joining us, and we’ll speak to you soon. Take care..

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global’s fourth quarter 2020 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..