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Tele Columbus HQ

German cable operator Tele Columbus has been forced to revise its full-year targets after a slower-than-expected start to the year.

The company now expects homes connected to be stable year-on-year at the end of 2018 at around 3.6 million. It expects low-to-mid single-digit revenue growth and normalised EBITDA of between €265 million and €280 million.

Tele Columbus said that ongoing integration efforts following its acquisition of Pepcom had negatively affected customer service, leading it to ramp up marketing activities.

The company said a quarter-on-quarter decline in its TV base would be partially compensated over the course of the year.

It said that the ongoing integration of Pepcom, on track to be completed by the end of Q2, had revealed “the necessity for additional fine tuning and follow-up tasks” in the second half of this year.

Tele Columbus saw its pay TV base decline by 3.7% year-on-year to 2.309 million, with premium TV subscribers declining by 1.4% to 424,000.

Broadband internet customers climbed by 7.5% to reach 575,000, while telephony customers increased by 6.7% to 547,000.

Tele Columbus posted revenues of €123.4 million for Q1, up 2%. Normalised EBITDA including positive one-off and phasing effects, was up 7% to €65.4 million.