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NTL sticks to 2001 target
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March 8, 2001: 9:55 a.m. ET
Cable TV operator post loss but vows to meet 2001 targets
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LONDON (CNN) - NTL, Britain's largest cable television company, said on Thursday it plans to curb its spending in a move become profitable.
The New York-based company said it was on course to reach its 2001 target of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £385 million ($561.9 million) and revenues of £2.6 billion.
Chief Executive Barclay Knapp laid out NTL's strategy as the company announced a pretax loss, before exceptional items, of $3.1 billion, up from $768 million the year ago. About a third was interest payments on its debt
A third of that was interest payments on money borrowed to pay for its expansion. The company has made 11 acquisitions in the UK in the last 18 months.
In the fourth-quarter, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation – a measure of financial performance of companies that are heavily in debt – was 65 million pounds.
The net loss for the three months to Dec. 31 was $1.2 billion, or $4.57 a share, from a profit of $121.3 million, or $0.60, in the year earlier period.
NTL now had 600,000 digital subscribers in Britain, and that it planned
to raise monthly subscription costs for new users from May to £15 from £10.
The company plans to increase the number of subscribers to its digital television services to 1.25 million by the end of the year, and gain 100,000 customers for its broadband Internet service. It currently has only 12,800.
Knapp said NTL would now concentrate on improving figures by boosting the average revenues it gets from each customer rather than winning new customers, so that it could reach its 2001 targets.
Those targets include, revenue of £2.6 billion in 2001 and £3.4 billion in 2002. Capital expenditure will total £1.3 billion in 2001, falling to £1 billion the following year.
"Our immediate goal is to drive the majority of revenue growth from ARPU increases rather than adding new customers," he said. 
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