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Cable group NTL has announced that a US court has confirmed its reorganisation plan and that the company will re-emerge from bankruptcy protection in October.
Under the reorganisation plan NTL will be split into two groups. NTL Inc. will be renamed "NTL Europe, Inc." which will be the holding company for NTL in continental Europe. NTL Communications Corp. will be renamed "NTL Incorporated" and will be the holding company for NTL in the UK and Ireland.
The financial restructuring includes a deal that will hand over most of NTL's shares to creditors. That deal with banks and bondholders will swap stock for USD10.9 billion worth of debt, a plan that set a record for corporate bond default. Before the restructuring, the company had around USD17 billion in debt.
Barclay Knapp will stay on as chief executive and president of NTL UK and Ireland but a new chief executive officer is yet to be named for NTL Europe, the company said in a statement.
"We are extremely pleased to be emerging from these cases so quickly," said Knapp. "The support we have received from our various stakeholders has allowed us to move through this process without significant interruption to our business."
NTL's business has been improving despite its bankruptcy problems. In its quarterly results announced in mid-August, NTL reported a jump in second quarter earnings. The firm said that second quarter EBIDTA results were STG174 million, compared to STG110 million in the same quarter in 2001. On a sequential basis, EBITDA fell from STG177 million in the first quarter of the year. NTL's total revenue came to STG627 million in the quarter, slightly lower than last year's STG634 million figure.
The company lost 70,000 subscribers in the UK during the second quarter, with just under 2.7 million signed up to TV, phone or Internet services at the end of June. This figure was countered however by a climb in NTL's average revenue per user, which rose to STG40.54 per month, up from STG40.07 last quarter.
EBIDTA for the Irish operation, previously called Cablelink, was STG4 million in the second quarter of 2002, up by STG1 million sequentially and by STG3 million year-on-year. The company has around 370,000 subscribers in Ireland, mostly for its basic cable package.
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