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Barclays Maintains an 'Overweight' on Liberty Global (LBTYA); Expect Accelerating Sub Growth in 3Q11

October 31, 2011 2:57 PM EDT
Get Alerts LBTYA Hot Sheet
Price: $16.93 --0%

Rating Summary:
    11 Buy, 9 Hold, 1 Sell

Rating Trend: Up Up

Today's Overall Ratings:
    Up: 10 | Down: 9 | New: 10
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Barclays maintains an 'Overweight' on Liberty Global (NASDAQ: LBTYA) price target of $48.00.

Barclays analyst says, "We remain positive on LBTYA shares, and believe the company's story (above-industry growth, strong capital returns, shareholder-friendly capital structure) remains intact. While concern about US cable names could continue to pressure shares, we believe the read-through to LBTYA is imperfect, in particular because LBTYA has limited exposure to programming cost pressures, as lack of "must have" content limits programmer leverage, and video is a smaller contributor to the existing revenue base and to growth."

"Expecting Strong Subs in 3Q11E, With EBITDA Growth Reaccelerating in 4Q11E. We expect 3Q11 to show accelerating sub growth YoY (212k net adds), driven in part by more aggressive marketing which, combined with Telenet's purchase of Belgian soccer rights and one-time items in 3Q10, is likely to lead to the lowest organic EBITDA growth of the year. We now expect 5.3% full-year 2011E EBITDA growth."

Austar Sale Looks Feasible, Would Be Modestly Accretive. We believe that a regulatory decision on the Austar sale is likely by November 30th, and continue to view a sale as modestly ($0.82) accretive to our LBTYA valuation."

For more ratings news on Liberty Global click here and for the rating history of Liberty Global click here.

Shares of Liberty Global closed at $41.14 yesterday.


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