Acquisition of blinkbox and Tesco Broadband

Released: 08 Jan 2015 07:08

RNS Number : 5863B
TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC
08 January 2015
 

 

8th January 2015

TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC

Acquisition of blinkbox and Tesco Broadband

 

TalkTalk has acquired the blinkbox movies business ("blinkbox") and the Tesco broadband and voice base from Tesco Plc.  The assets have been acquired free of debt and as a single transaction for cash.

blinkbox is one of the leading on-demand providers of pay content in the UK and works across multiple platforms and devices - both inside and outside the home.  blinkbox's established technical expertise in multi-platform, multi-device content delivery and incremental content relationships are highly complementary to TalkTalk's existing strategyof being the best value for money TV provider in the UK, offering customers flexible access to the widest range of free and paid for content.  TalkTalk TV is already the fastest growing TV platform in the UK with over 1.2 million customers and blinkbox will help accelerate the development of our platform by delivering a number of key initiatives significantly faster, such as offering a TV app to customers for in and out of home access to paid-for content across a range of devices.

The integration of blinkbox with our existing TV business is expected to begin immediately with the benefits of restructuring the combined platform and revenue synergies expected to flow from the end of calendar 2015.

As part of the same transaction we have also acquired Tesco's broadband and voice base (c75,000 broadband and c20,000 voice households) which will enable us to further leverage the superior scale and economics of our national network.  As with the recent acquisition of the Virgin Media National base, customers will be transferred across to the TalkTalk network over the coming months.

Dido Harding, Chief Executive of TalkTalk commented:

"Since launch TalkTalk TV has demonstrated its popularity with value-seeking customers to become the UK's fastest growing TV service.  We are excited about the opportunity that blinkbox's platform and technology expertise bring, and which will significantly accelerate the development of our TV platform.  The purchase of Tesco's broadband base is another example of TalkTalk leveraging its national network to grow faster.  We are excited about the future of quad-play - fixed phone and broadband, TV and mobile - and this acquisition will help to further drive home our value for money advantage."

 

Analyst and investor enquiries

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 +44 (0)203 417 1037

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