Virgin loses subscribers in second quarter

Virgin Mobile. While they introduced an unlimited calling plan and acquired Helio, those two moves didn’t occur until the final week of the quarter. They took some lumps before that, losing 111,273 customers in those three months, according to Reuters. Over 728,000 people signed up for the company’s plans, but even more decided to quit. The big killer, and part of the reason the company’s profit was down 50 percent, is average revenue per user. ARPU is an important stat in the industry, and Virgin’s fell 7.9 percent from last year, to $19.32. The hope is that the unlimited plans help out that figure for the third quarter. Additionally, the completion of the Helio deal should open up Virgin for a number of more expensive, possibly contract-based plans, which should also help the figure. Churn was actually better than expected, at 5.6 percent. That seems rather high, but it’s not bad for a company that doesn’t require you to sign a contract. CEO Dan Schulman has said that he wishes to get the Helio acquisition completed within the next few weeks. Helio is still working on cutting its costs by 70 percent, which they are obligated to do before the deal is complete. Schulman on the deal:

“The Helio acquisition is transformative for us. The addition of a post-paid platform, outstanding data services, and compelling handsets will enable us to offer more value to our entire customer base; prepaid, hybrid and post-paid alike.”

The second quarter is traditionally a rough one for cell carriers. I’ll bet we see better results from Virgin when we get the results in October/November.]]>