Earnings Labs

Liberty Global plc (LBTYB)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 6, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's 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 www.lgi.com. Following today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded on this date, August 6, 2008. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mike Fries, President and CEO of Liberty Global. Please go ahead, sir.

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Thank you and welcome everybody to our second quarter call. I'll do some quick introductions, we have online with us today Gene Musselman, President and COO of UPC; Mauricio Ramos, President of VTR in Chile; Miranda Curtis, President of Liberty Global Japan and Graham Hollis; Bernard Dvorak and Charlie Bracken, our Co-CFOs. We have Shane O'Neill, our Chief Strategy Officer; Liz Markowski, our General Counsel; and Rick Westerman, who you all know. And I think, before we get rolling here, the operator is going to do quick remarks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much, sir. Page two of the slide 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 with respect to Liberty Global's outlook and future growth prospects, its expectations regarding competition and M&A activity and other statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks and uncertainties include those details from time to time in Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed forms 10-K and 10-Q. Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update or revise 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 back over to Mr. Mike Fries.

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Thank you. So our agenda will follow our typical path here. I'll do some highlights briefly, I'll turnover to Gene and Mauricio and Miranda to give you some color on their respective regions and Bernie is going to wrap with financials and then we will get to your questions. The operator said we are talking from slides. So, I'm going to start on slide 4, hope you all have that with the big picture, so to speak. And first of all I think we have a lot of good things to talk about this quarter. I'm going to begin at the top with our growth in value added services. We've talked a lot about the two key drivers for us in the past year, consistent subscriber additions in voice and data, and ARPU growth supported by our digital TV rollout. And if you follow the results of our domestic peer group, you probably you would have noticed that they reported pretty good numbers in these two areas and I think we can certainly include that in our highlights as well. For the quarter, we added 320,000 voice and data RGUs, that's inline with our second quarter last year and 336,000 digital TV add, that's a record for us. So our growth remained strong and consistent in this high ARPU, high margin products. The one area of subscriber weakness continues to be low-end analog TV costumers in Europe, a topic we discuss and analyzed with you often and we'll do it again today, and Gene will address the issues and what we're doing about them. The impact of these two conflicting trends partly explains why we would describe our financial results as stable for the quarter and year-to-date. On the positive side, operating cash flow year-to-date of $2.26 billion is up…

Gene Musselman

President

Thank you Mike. Turning to UPC Broadband, that's slide 8 for those of you that have a deck, I'd like to draw your attention to the highlights for the second quarter. If you look at the top right chart, it illustrates as Mike noted that digital cable has been pivotal to our results this year, as we now offer digital across all ten of our markets. In April and May, Hungary and Poland were successfully launched, and combined have generated 59,000 digital cable adds in Q2. In the Netherlands, we added 29,000 subscribers in Q2, making it the highest digital growth quarter since the migration from the Push strategy to the Pull strategy going back to 2006. Additionally, we've continued to roll out enhanced digital services across our footprint in Q2, specifically High Def and DVR. With more than 425,000 subscriptions, now over one quarter of our digital subscribers take High Def or DVR. These enhanced services have been instrumental in driving digital cable revenues, which are up more than 40% year on year. At this point, I'd like to emphasize that we are very focused on using High Def TV to exploit the competitive advantage that we have compared to DSL based video products. We think High Def is a meaningful differentiator for us and we can see momentum building around High Def in those markets where we've launched. Generally speaking, we're realizing considerable growth across all of our advanced services. In Q2 '08, we organically added 331,000 advanced RGUs, 76% higher than Q2 '07. Growth was driven by 179,000 digital, 67,000 data and 85,000 voice adds. Data adds were largely stable with Central and Eastern Europe compensating for slower growth in our more mature Western European markets. Also, our voice business continues to grow steadily as costumers gravitate…

Mauricio Ramos

President

Thank you, Gene. I'm on slide 9 on VTR and we had another good quarter with good operational and financial results. To start, we would begin first by showing you where VTR sits today in terms of national market shares in our three core products. In the video market in Chile, as you may know, VTR is the largest player with approximately 70% market share. This is roughly as of the end of last year, but since our network does not cover the entire country, we do expect to lose some market share over time. It is important however to point out that we continue to grow our video customer base (inaudible) every year because PTV penetration in Chile remains at only about 35% and the market continues to expand. Last year for example, we added well over 40,000 video subscribers and this year so far, we have added 18,000 video subscribers so far. In terms of the residential voice business, we have nearly 25% market share again on a nationwide basis, although our network does not cover the entire nation. So, if you look just at the VTR cable footprint, our market share doubled out much higher. As many of you may know, VTR was one, perhaps not the first cable company in the world to offer residential point services, and that's what explains these high market shares. This product has been a steady engine of growth for us over the year and we think it has good mix going forward. Finally, on broadband Internet, our national market share is approximately 47%. But again if you were to look at our footprint alone, that figure will be over 60%. So we feel pretty good about our market share position in Chilean market and that trickles of course into our…

Miranda Curtis

Management

Thank you, Mauricio. J:COM continues to deliver steady growth, with most of the gain in high end, high value sector of the market, as you can see from the data, 160 meg rollout. As the slide shows, that delivered the strongest quarterly data at J:COM for the past three years. J:COM has successfully launched the largest DOCSIS 3.0 rollout in the world and has now deployed the 160 meg product in all of its regions. Fully 26% of J:COM's data adds this quarter were 160 megs where it's available, comfortably exceeding our own expectations. And the real benefit of this product is that it appeals to a high end costumer, who is typically not particularly price sensitive. At the same time, J:COM is trialing [ph] targeted at the low end of the high speed data range in order to expand its costumer base. And the key factor to keep in mind is that despite all the noise about competition, J:COM continues to grow its bundled rate, continues to grow its ARPU, while it's already low churn continues to decline. As far as digital is concerned, with digital penetration already at 73%, we foresee some slowdown in digital growth as the company prepares for the final push to achieve full digitalization, which will be completed well before the Japanese Government's own objective of full digitalization by the end of 2011. We expect to see continuing growth meanwhile in J:COM's VoD, in the rollout of new HD channels and in the take-up of HD DVRs. J:COM remains the unquestionable Japanese market leader in the rollout HD services and set-top boxes, well ahead of all other distribution platforms. On the M&A front, as Mike mentioned, the long awaited FCN CV21 merger transaction will serve as a catalyst to strengthen J:COM's position in the key region of Kyushu adding almost 200,000 RGUs and another 500,000 (inaudible) to J:COM's consolidated footprint. We do still believe J:COM has more to do to improve growth on the net add front and we continue to work with J:COM management on the implementation of new sales and marketing strategies to achieve that aim. On the financial front, in terms of financial performance, J:COM realized Q2 rebased revenue and OCF growth of 7% and 9%, respectively. Keep in mind that Q2 OCF is generally weaker due in part to seasonal and annual factors which Bernie will discuss in a moment. Looking to the second half for J:COM, we will continue to grow the J:COM flagship 160 meg product and will leverage the J:COM HD market leadership to fuel net adds. And from a financial perspective, we'll be particularly focused on J:COM's cost containment along with running the business as efficiently as possible. With that, I'll pass over to Bernie to walk you through the financial results for the quarter.

Bernie Dvorak

Management

Thanks, Miranda. Slide 12 shows our financial highlights for the second quarter. Revenue totaled $2.73 billion, an increase of 25% over Q2 2007 on a reported basis. And similar to recent quarters, favorable currency movements were a large contributor to reported revenue growth while acquisitions played only a minor role. On a rebased basis, revenue growth was 6% in Q2, similar to Q1 with markets like Poland and Chile generating double digit rebased top line growth in the quarter. OCF came in at $1.15 billion, an increase of 34% over the prior year, resulting primarily from FX and organic growth. And for the quarter, we achieved rebased growth of 13%. I'll get into more segment detail on the next slide. OCF margins as Mike talked about were 42.3% in Q2, an increase of 280 basis points from Q2 of last year and slightly above Q1 margins. We continue to realize year-over-year increases in margin as a result of our operating leverage and focused on controlling corporate overhead and cost savings from acquisition integration. Lastly, our OCF conversion was 88% for the quarter compared to 61% in last year's Q2, which essentially means that for every dollar of incremental revenue growth, $0.88 fell to the OCF line. If you turn to the slide 13, this gives a breakdown of OCF for our reportable segments. As I said earlier, rebased OCF for the quarter grew at 13% to $1.15 billion and stands at 14% for the year. Our top performing markets in terms of Q2 rebased OCF were Ireland, Poland, Chile, and Australia, all with growth rates in excess of 20%. UPC realized 13% rebased growth for both Q2 and year-to-date, reporting OCF of $547 million and $1.1 billion. OCF performance continues to be negatively impacted by Austria, Hungary, and Romania in…

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. (Operator instructions) And our first question comes from Vijay Jayant from Lehman Brothers. Vijay Jayant – Lehman Brothers: Hi guys. Mike, given this country data that you showed on revenue and OCF growth on rebates basis, and the initiatives Gene talked about in really the three markets that are the laggers [ph], can you sort of guess how long will it probably take to sort of get those markets back to sort of your normalized growth rate? Is it one quarter out or is it six to nine months out? Second is, obviously you talked about the whole digital rollout in Europe and I'm sure you are probably getting some lift on HD growth from the soccer championship thing in June and the Olympics starting next week, can you sort of talk about any life – the magnitude of lift you can probably see in the second half of the year from those kind of things? Thanks.

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Sure, thanks Vijay. I think on the individual countries that we spent sometime talking about in our relatively lengthy remarks this morning, Gene laid out the basic plan and the basic action items that we're taking. And in each case I think he showed and demonstrated some pretty positive development scope. We're not in the position today to tell you, Vijay, is it one quarter or is it two or three quarters. I can simply say that we're optimistic about the actions we're taking today and we are seeing benefit. And clearly as I think Gene and Bernie mentioned, we expect the second half of this year at UPC to be slightly more positive than the first half in terms of revenue growth. One big factor coming from the very markets and the very initiatives that Gene describe as well as the other thing he just mentioned, in particular the killer apps and digital which are starting to pick up pretty meaningfully in just about all of our markets. As you know HD, Japan is all HD and has seen good development of HD content throughout the last – really since it's been launched and we now have the DVRs in all but two of our markets and we'll have Romania in the last and Slovenia in the last two markets launch in the forth quarter. We now have HD and/or HD DVRs in all but three of our markets and the other three will happen in the end of this year. So, we've essentially got the products in place and I think while we haven't reached a tipping point in HD in every case, it is starting to take hold, whether it's the Olympics or European soccer or other major sporting event. Every month, we've seen new and more…

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Sure, this is in Holland, one of the regulatory agencies there has issued I guess it's – I am not sure exactly what is described (inaudible), they did the same thing three years ago Vijay, and virtually the same thing, and the EU at that point in time concluded that there was sufficient competition in the market in Holland not to approve that particular request by OPTA [ph]. I can tell you that if there was video competition three years ago, there sure is heck more competition today. So we're a bit befuddled to be honest about this approach. It seems to be KPN driven, why wouldn’t they, although KPN themselves do not – if this were ever to become law would not benefit from it, they would not be allowed to access any of the networks. It's intended to be for third party resellers who would have the ability to bundle an analog TV product into their products but not without – I mean I believe the wholesale rates and things of that nature haven’t necessarily been finalized and they would have to secure their own broadcasting rights. So, we're a bit confused by it and this happens just about every two or three years in the Dutch market. And at this point, we are saying when about what it means to us on any kind of practical or near term basis. Vijay Jayant – Lehman Brothers: Thank you.

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. And our next question comes from David Kestenbaum with Morgan Joseph. David Kestenbaum – Morgan Joseph: Okay, thanks. Mike, you talked a lot about the shortfall being related to competitive issues. Can you just talk about how much you think is related to economic issues? And as the economy gets better, do you think you can get back to the type of guidance, 7% to 9% type of rebased growth that you would forecast this year (inaudible)?

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Yes, I mean I think it's – and I'll let others speak as well, I do think that we are not immune to what's happening around the world and certainly in this market from an economic point of view. I will say however that we aren't seeing any as much direct impact from the economic development here as you might expect. There are a couple of instances, for example, in Hungary where we've seen some inflation. So, we do think that costumers are perhaps becoming more price sensitive, no question about that. But we don't think that in the long run or even if this sustains, it will have a meaningful impact over our products. I mean, I'll state what all of our peers say, which is this is relatively recession resistant products and services, broadband and TV and voice are generally not the products and services that people get rid off, if they're feeling economic constraints. They might as I've just said be more price sensitive, and so we have to be cognizant of that and I think deal with that where we can. But I don't think we're losing any direct sales. Sales in Europe in fact year to date are ahead of last year and ahead of budget. So, it's not impacting our sales as far as we can tell and I think perhaps (inaudible) perhaps even Chile a little bit, we may have some modest impact from household discretionary income, but we're not seeing that as the major driver here. David Kestenbaum – Morgan Joseph: Okay. And can you compare and contrast Poland where you're doing really well compared to some of the other Eastern European markets, what are you doing differently in that market?

Mike Fries

President and CEO

Well, I'll just say a couple and then let Gene do it, I mean, the benefits we're seeing in Poland have come from years of rebuild where we spend considerable time and money rebuilding networks that were prior to this one way and didn't have to buy products. So, it's a low penetration base off newly rebuilt networks in a market that seems to have great appetite for broadband and the bundle. Gene, you want to add to that?

Gene Musselman

President

I guess the only thing I would add Mike is that, I mean to differentiate between Hungary and Romania, for example, in Poland, there is less competition, primarily TPSA, the incumbent, along with the overbuild situation in some of the major cities like Warsaw and (inaudible). But that overbuild situation has been there since the very beginning. So, it really hasn't gotten any worse. In fact of anything, it's probably moderated. I think the major difference is that we have – we continue to do a large amount of upgrades in Poland and that allows you to introduce the new services which of course then drives the ARPU and the revenue, and they (inaudible). And if you look at particularly Hungary and Romania to some extent, there we have completed a large portion of the rebuilds and we just don't have the same upside opportunity via the introduction of new services. So, there we are more heavily penetrated with those services.

Mike Fries

President and CEO

It seemed to be slightly more maybe perhaps a bit more sophisticated consumer base there and we launched the DVR there and went right out the door. And I think Gene, something like 80% of our sales people were picking up DVR. So, it just seems to be partially because there's some satellite competitors who are pushing the technology quite as well, it seems to be more sophisticated costumer base. David Kestenbaum – Morgan Joseph: Fair enough.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. Our next question will come from David Gober with Morgan Stanley. David Gober – Morgan Stanley: Thanks guys. Gene, I was wondering if you could give us a couple of the early takeaways from the soft launch of DOCSIS 3.0 in the Netherlands, and also if you guys could talk a little bit more generally about your strategy on DOCSIS 3.0 and how you view that in term of – is it a product that you are going to upgrade the top tier subs all to DOCSIS 3.0 or is it something that you sell as an incrementally ARPU driver, is it really the ARPU driver, so is it a penetration driver?

Mike Fries

President and CEO

I think it's both, and as you get your thoughts together on Holland, it is a penetration driver, a retention tool and an ARPU driver. I mean, clearly you take a market like Holland where on average we are generating EUR20 to EUR21 a month from a relatively large broadband base. Clearly, when we start launching 30, 60, 90, 120 meg products, we don't anticipate ARPU there eroding. We expect to gravitate people to higher tiers at competitive prices in a way that our competitors certainly can't do. And so, it is in our minds a volume growth tool, as well as, a means of putting a floor under ARPU and then driving ARPU over time. Bandwidth consumption – increase of bandwidth consumption everywhere in the world, but particularly in Europe. More so than the U.S. in fact, it has been a foregone conclusion. And you are either in that space with a game-changing technology or you are not, and we think we're going to be first out the door with this type of product and service, and it will have a meaningful impact on perhaps the single biggest area we focused on in our broadband business and that's ARPU erosion from people switching to cheaper and yester out [ph] products, so we're pretty confident that this is going to be something we roll out in all the markets in Europe at when and where needed, certainly on a phase basis. But cost efficiently, CapEx efficient and in the manner that's kind of have an impact on both volume and ARPU.

Gene Musselman

President

Yes, just to add to that and focus more on in your question. We have been field traveling, I guess the EuroDOCSIS 3.0 since July and at this point, we've expanded the field trial to two communities. I think at this point, we have a couple a hundred of boxes out in the field and the good news is that we have not experienced any technical issues and as you know, EuroDOCSIS 3.0 is a major leap forward in technology in anytime it's rolled out, such a technology you can experience some fairly significant problems. We've been lacking and we have not. We've had a few configuration issues of legacy boxes and homes, a few wiring problems. But at this point, everything is looking relatively good. So we'll continue the rollout in the Netherlands and start scaling and hopefully move forward to a full commercial rollout. We're initially targeting areas where there are some fibers to the home over bills that's taking place here in Netherlands. The target for this year is to pack somewhere between 400 and a million homes. I know it's quite arranged but that is the target at this point with making EuroDOCSIS ready for service in those homes past. The initial rollout will be utilizing cable modems instead of the EMTAs. For example, we won't have some of the – let's call it the equipment that we need until later in the next year. So our focus in the Netherlands initially is to protect those areas where there is a fiber and where we have higher ARPU subscribers and then depending upon the competitive situation, we will adjust speed of the rollout of EuroDOCSIS in the Netherlands throughout '09. It's our intention to rollout EuroDOCSIS to as much of the plant across all over markets as we can next year and I suspect by the end of '09 that a large portion of our plant will be EuroDOCSIS 3.0 ready whether we introduce the higher mega-type speeds in all of those markets will of course be driven by the competitive situation. Does that answering your question? David Gober – Morgan Stanley: Yes, it does. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. (Operator instructions) Next, we will go to Alan Gould with Natixis. Alan Gould – Natixis: Good morning. First question is from Miranda. Miranda, Japan's bagged a quarter [ph] of the reported EBITDA. You are done 10% rebase to OCF growth for the first half of the year. The company has targeted 13% to 15%. Are there any structural issues or reasons why Japan would be having a lower growth rate than the rest of the company?

Miranda Curtis

Management

I think what was seeing, as Bernie mentioned, some factors related to programming costs which of course elements that are being introduced reflects the first time in this year's numbers. I think Bernie mentioned some of it. Some of the businesses like golf network are very susceptible to seasonal programming costs, it seems like the PGA Tours, and we've also have seen some rate hikes. But we're actually working very closely with the management to contain any areas where we were seeing cost increasing out. And we're very optimistic but as the U South [ph] marketing strategy has come into place, and as we can see the take off of the value-added services that we described earlier on, that we will start to see this OCF numbers come back on track. So, there is noting fundamental or structural in the market that we think should concern you.

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

I will answer at the end of that. We took the board as we do every summer; we take them every summer to a foreign market for a board meeting. We spend a fair amount of time in the country talking to politicians and we're meeting with management and we will be getting an in-depth view of that market. We went to Japan in June and I would simply say that the board came a way as did we all with a very positive, in fact even more positive than when we arrived, view of this particular asset and it's steady straight-forward and consistent growth, as well as the ability to accelerate that growth. Partially, given some of the changes happening the macro environment, particular the requirement for digital conversion, and that's only a few years off here and the government realizing that the cable TV sector and J:COM in particular, represent a very important component in that digital conversion which we are trying to achieve. So I can tell you that we are more bullish today than we were a year ago, even six months ago. We (inaudible) board as well on this particular business, its ability to continue to penetrate from a relatively low penetration level in its core product and services, and its ability to compete against the folks out there. It's up against day to day entity in particular. So we're pretty bullish. Alan Gould – Natixis: When is [ph] digital conversion in Japan?

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

I think it is 2011.

Miranda Curtis

Management

The open mandate is 2011. But J:COM will be fully digital significantly before that, sometime around the winter of 2009. Alan Gould – Natixis: Okay. I have one follow-up technical question. What is the cost to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 and what do you need to have a 160-megabit service? Do you just need enough channels available to bond the channels to do, go to 160 megabits?

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Yes, I don’t know how much we've said publicly, in principle, we're looking at in Europe for example, roughly $20 here give or take for home past, and if you are 2.0 which we are largely now across Europe, the upgrade is more like a card swap and not that meaningful. We're not giving you – I'm not going to give today absolute CapEx figures because we're still fine-tuning those next year, but I would tell you that it is a not a meaningful increase in our CapEx component over the 18 months, two-year time frame that we'd roll this product out. Each market is different but in principle, it's just channel bonding and the beauty of our business in Japan and Europe is we have very high capacity networks with very small, at least in the case of Europe, very small analog packages. And of course, Japan will be all digital shortly. And that, because we have small analog packages, we have tons of bandwidth available to bond, whether it's 408 [ph] or whatever we think we'll need over time. And that's something that perhaps the thing which (inaudible) a bid from U.S. guys who in some cases might not have sufficient channel capacity, even others might. But we don’t see any issue, any structural rebuild or large scale rebuild required to achieve continued speed improvement with DOCSIS 3.0. Alan Gould – Natixis: Thank you.

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. Our next question will come from Paul Kagan with PK Worldmedia. Paul Kagan – PK Worldmedia: Thanks. Hi, Mike.

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Hey, Paul. Paul Kagan – PK Worldmedia: I got a question about your program of buyback. Can you tell us the average price that you paid for the stock you bought back?

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Yes, I think we probably can. It's approximately $30, since we started on the $5.2 billion level. Paul Kagan – PK Worldmedia: The comments you made about, it’s the best use of our capital. I wonder if you could expand on that a little bit. Some people would say, well, you've got a growing business around the world and you could do more technology and keep looking for more revenue and new applications instead of applying so much money to the stock, so…

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

I think the key response to that is we are free cash flow positive and generative in our core operating markets, so we generate excess cash over and above our CapEx programs, our R&D and our innovation program. So if we needed to spend more capital in the individual operations, it would come from that $445 million we generated year-to-date if we thought it was necessary. The vast majority of our buybacks are coming from the debt capacity we have built into our business and our ability to continue to add to that debt capacity through operating cash flow growth. So I would say we probably haven’t spent $1 on buyback that could otherwise or should otherwise have been spent in the operating business because we're generating free cash and the vast majority of the money we're using to buy back stock is coming from generous debt capacity that evolves from our cash flow growth. Paul Kagan – PK Worldmedia: I'm fascinated by the situation because of the times we are in. Most people can't borrow money and also other companies in the field are relatively inexpensive compared historically. So, how does this play against possible acquisitions at a time that would seem to be really good for acquisitions?

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Well, as I've noted in my remarks in somewhat of counting sheep [ph] fashion, we haven't seen the sort of compression in private multiples, the topic you've known about and written about for 20, 30 years; we have not seen a compression in private multiples in the markets that we're evaluating or the assets that we are considering and that's good news, bad news, right. It's good news because somebody thinks these businesses are still worth 8, 9, 10, 11 times and there aren't going to rid of them; those are generally smart money. It's not great news because we're all hopeful of great opportunity to extend and grow at cheap multiples and when you can't borrow at eight times debt to EBITDA, that equity makes it difficult to generate a meaningful return. So it's combination of sellers I think hanging on to private market multiples and banks and lenders not getting up to the levels we had historically seen in the 7, 8 times leverage multiples and that gap is being funded with equity which is making the IRRs a bit lower than we would hope. So something has to give, debt capacity or private market multiples on the exit. But, today, we just haven’t seen that and so we are not the type of company to sit on cash and burn a whole in our pocket. Our stock represents the highest rate of return based on what we know and we know our company very well and what we think we can achieve over the next two to three years. And so we'll continue to put that to work and that's the business we're in. I think or hope for over time that perhaps some of these assets will unfold, will become available, but we've always said that there are no must-have deals in our future and the core operating business we represent today is the business we think can grow and prosper on the footprint we have. Paul Kagan – PK Worldmedia: Okay, one other question, if I could. You mentioned a few minutes back about, or Gene did, targeting areas with fiber to the home overbuilds, that's a telco overbuild isn't it?

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

In some cases, it is. In case of Holland, it's a private company that the telco has invested in. One other Telco in our footprints, Swisscom, has talked about fiber builds. I think it's safe to say that they are very few and far between in Europe, but that doesn’t mean to say they won't over time develop in certain pockets where we might see some fiber development. That's one of the things we have to be cautious of as we rollout these mega-speeds and as we start to completely change the paradigm and the price-value relationship, we want to do it sufficiently to generate consumer interest and be farther ahead of our competitors, but we don’t necessarily want to stimulate three or four or five- fiber builds. Although I'll tell you, even if the telcos we compete with did start fiber building, it will take years to complete, cost billions of dollars and in our opinion be very – we will be out way ahead of that. And so while we certainly are cognizant of that today, we've got a pretty wide open field and we are going to take advantage of it. Paul Kagan – PK Worldmedia: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much. And our final question today will come from Camille McLeod Salmo [ph] from Forces Investments [ph]. Camille McLeod Salmo – Forces Investments: Hi, I just wondered if you could give of a bit more color about Ireland and your building of the networks that compete with AIRCOM [ph].

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Sure, Gene, you want to deal with that?

Gene Musselman

President

Yes. By the end of this year, we will have completely upgraded the plant except for Dublin itself. So the entire countryside will be upgraded. The focus then shifts to Dublin itself and we anticipate that we will complete the rebuild of Dublin sometime late '09, maybe somewhat into 2010. We're progressing a little bit slower in Dublin than what we'd like because there our cable plant is attached to façade of buildings. It's aerial, but aerial is normally attached to telephone poles. In this case, it is actually attached to the facade of houses. So, one of the issues that we have with respect to replacement of cable and upgrading of amplifiers and changing out passes and those things is getting permissions to enter private property and to make those upgrades, and that has been slower than we anticipated in some cases. On the other hand, where we have upgraded the plant, which is everywhere except Dublin, we're very optimistic about the uptake that we're seeing in the advanced services. As you know, Ireland is basically a duopoly, us and AIRCOM, and there's just a huge appetite for telephony and data services. So we're highly motivated to move the Dublin upgrade as rapidly as we can and after the end of this year, we will be 100% focused on it. Camille McLeod Salmo – Forces Investments: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you so much and that is all the time that we have for questions. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to the speakers for any closing comments.

Michael Fries

Analyst · PK Worldmedia

Well, thanks everybody. We went a bit over but our remarks were tad long. We felt that was necessary. Thank you for your sticking with us those that have and the others here, as a management team we couldn't be more optimistic and focused on this business. We have individually and collectively a long history and I would say a successful history dealing with the adversity externally and internally and we don't see the sort of challenges in front of us as too difficult or too burdensome. We're actually very positive and we look forward to talking to you in November on our third quarter results and wish you all a relaxing and restful rest of your summer. Thanks again.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global's investor call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's web site at www.lgi.com. There, you can also find a copy of today's presentation material. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day.