Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's Fourth Quarter 2019 Investor Call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global, and any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the expressed written consent of Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at libertyglobal.com. After today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. Page 2 of the slides details the Company's Safe Harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements. Today's presentation may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the Company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed forms 10-Q and 10-K, as amended. Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or it’s conditions on which any such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries.

Thanks, operator, and welcome, everyone. Good to be back online with you, we have a lot to talk about today, so I’m going to kick it right off with some highlights, then Charlie will hit the numbers and we’ll get to your questions for the balance of the hour. I’m on slide four, which is a good snapshot of the year. I’m just going to stay upfront that there are handful of important story lined here, so bear with me. I’m going to spend a few minutes on this page. And we’ll start with the fact that we met or exceeded all of our guidance targets for 2019. You would know that revenue was largely flat year-over-year and we have had positive customer ARPU growth that was offset by a small customer loss of 74,000 and fee [Ph] based operating cash flow of 4.9 million was down 3% year-over-year. That's essentially what we forecasted it, and by the way was right on budget for us, and we widely reported the reasons for that, right, namely the turnaround in Switzerland, and the headwinds in the U.K. which we’ll talk a lot about today. And then finally, we had better than budgeted capital efficiency, which helped deliver 770 million of free cash flow exceeding our guidance. And that's a number that's up nearly 100% year-over-year. Now as we discussed for sometimes, just put these numbers in context. Europe is a more mature market today than it was five, 10 or 20 years ago. Broadband growth is slowing, that's inevitable, and the video business, while much healthier than the U.S. is flattening out in most countries. So having said that though, the opportunity to drive sustainable growth and healthy free cash flow is as real as it ever was. And to achieve that,…

Thanks Mike. And I’m on the page titled “Group Overview”. Mike's already kind of detailed the results of our key markets. So the annual figure, so, I'm going to focus on the key financials for Q4. Group revenue declined in Q4, 0.5% and OCF declined 4.1%. Both figures are broadly similar to the Q3 figures. The reduction in CapEx in Q4 to 28.2% of sales versus 32.9% last year continued the 2019 trend of lower capital intensity resulting in a Q4 OFCF of $443 million. Liquidity remains very strong with $8.1 billion of cash and revolver credit facilities of $3 billion. Since year-end, we've been very proactive on the refinancing front, and we now sit with a fixed cost of 4% for our interests and average maturity in our debt of approximately 7.4 years. Total consolidated debt was $26.3 billion, which resulted in a consolidated debt to OCF ratio of 5.4 times gross and 3.7 times net. Now we should note, we've changed our targeted four to five times debt to OCF leverage definition. From an LQA last quarter annualized, to an LTM last 12 months OCF basis. As we believe LTM approach is more appropriate metric for our portfolio of maturing assets. Now in Q4 the LQA numbers would've been slightly lower than the LTM at 5.2 times gross and 3.6 times net. On the next slide, we continue our additional disclosure which we've had over the past few quarters on how our central spend breaks down. Now I think, I can see from the chart, total central costs have been reduced by roughly $170 million in 2019, and we have further reductions planned for 2020. Now of the total $819 million spent in 2019, $660 million related to centralized technology and innovation activity, roughly half of this spend…

Thank you.[Operator instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Vijay Jayant. Please go ahead.

Good morning. It’s James Ratcliffe for Vijay. I wonder if you can go into give some more color on the expected impact of the front book, back book or loyalty, penalty work in the U.K. And, both in terms of the magnitude, the timing, when you expect this impact, and any thoughts about how you're going to balance your potential ARPU impacts versus you know a potential growth that impacts the environment? Thanks.

Thanks, James. I'll say a couple of things. I'll let Lutz chime in here with his thoughts. First of all, we're not providing any specific detail around that for obvious reasons. It's not really in our best interest to tell you specifically what we think we will, or won't do, how we'll price things, and what we think the impact will be, because this is obviously a competitive market. Second thing I'll say, is we've already implemented the program about 10 days ago, I believe in advance of the requirement to start notifications tomorrow, just to get a sense of how customers are reacting and what we think the outcome will be. And I would say, we're conservative overall in our assumptions of the impact. There's a wide range of impacts of course, but we're overall conservative and I think we have a lot of tools at our disposal here to ensure that the impact is minimized. But I think as it relates to almost our entire guidance and budget this year I would say in all instances we have been conservative. Lutz, you want to provide a little more color on that? Lutz Schüler: Yes. I mean, there's some public data available. Of course, there broadly half of our customer base is out of contract, so they have the opportunity to look for new deal. I think, what we are doing to simply keep them onto our network is a couple of things. So first of all, until end of March, we have given all our customers a one million all together which have speed below 100 meg, a speed upgrade free of charge. So we simply playing a different league in terms of speed. And we are leveraging that to keep our customers with us. And as Mike said earlier on, we drive fixed mobile convergence roughly 1, 2 percentage points, people who have quad-play with us on that. And then we have also to offer more stuff on the content side. So and guess, what I'm saying is, yes it is a change. We are definitely informing our customers about our products, but we have also a lot to offer, and we play in the high value segment meaning that our customers value our product, and therefore also are not necessarily so price sensitive than customers in the low end segment. We have planned capital for you -- for it, we have 10 days in the market and [Indiscernible]. And so far, I think the impact is it’s absolutely under control.

By the way the 50% that book from -- book is about the same as Sky, so it’s not that dissimilar from other players in the market.

Thanks.

And our next question comes from the line of Polo Tang from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi. I've got one question and one clarification question. So in terms of strategic options, press reports have stated that you're in talks with Sky about both the fiber JV and the potential cable wholesale deal. If such a deal did happen, can you remind us what the merits of a deal would be from both the Liberty Global perspective, but also a Sky perspective, and the clarification question is really just about guidance, because can you clarify what's implied for your U.K. and Swiss guidance, because you obviously said mid-single-digit declines to the group. Telenet guides towards plus 1% and you've outlined 100 million impact from the U.K. headwinds. So does this imply therefore minus 5% OCF decline in the U.K. and high single digit OCF declines in Switzerland?

Charlie, I'll let you prepare for the guidance question. On the strategic options, Polo as I said at the -- in my remarks, I'm not going to get into great detail about what we might or might not be doing, doesn't generally serve us well. On the other hand, just speaking theoretically, what would a partnership with anybody doesn’t have to be Sky, a partnership focused on driving greater reach for the Virgin network mean to us. I think, that's pretty straightforward. Today, Virgin, reaches half the country. We think we have a brand, a product, a capability that's underutilized and getting our network into our products for the rest of the U.K. market would be just by itself a very valuable outcome. Secondly, we've already shown with Lightning that there is potential to penetrate and drive returns on capital. And while we're not willing to sacrifice our free cash flow to do that on balance sheet, because we believe in levered free cash flow and never to free cash flow per share, we would certainly entertain ideas or ways of achieving that off balance sheet that could accelerate the reach of one gigabit speeds, and the Virgin brand. And you would expect us to do that. So there's lots of almost logical reasons why extending our reach, driving scale and doing it in an efficient way from a capital point of view would be hugely valuable to Virgin, and to us, and to you and others as shareholders. On the wholesale question, trickier, obviously. But if you look at Virgin today, we're only utilizing about 40% of our networks. So on footprint generally we've got 40 plus percent of the network being utilized, which is the highest market share of anybody in our footprint. But nonetheless, there are other…

Yes just to say, look we as in the past we're not going to give specific guidance for our retained operations. But look as you rightly point out mathematically, those companies will see declines. The biggest issue I think in our guidance, and Mike referenced it, is this end of contract life? We also don't think any company in the U.K. can give you precision of what it means, because it's so many variable factors. And I would echo Mike’s comment that we've tried to be prudent in our guidance, just to make sure we don't mislead you later in the year, but hopefully, we've been conservative. So I hope to know if nothing else. But the other thing I’d already highlighted, there's a big shift going on between OpEx and CapEx. I'm sure many of you are aware of this, but as the world moves towards cloud services, that is a very different accounting treatment. So for example, a cloud product is an OpEx cost whereas if it's a data center, as it was five years ago, that's CapEx. So, some of the decline in OCF and the increase in OFCF is just a shift between from CapEx into OpEx. And that's one of the reasons why we're continuing to really focus on operations are bonuses and whether our companies are running the OFCF line, because for us that is a much better metric going forward of the underlying cash flow generation.

Clear. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Polo.

And our next question comes from the line of David Wright from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi guys and thanks very much for taking the calls. Mike, if I could just ask you one more question on the whole concept of building and potentially creating some kind of off balance sheet venture. You've talked about having an infrastructure investor alongside. I guess, you know by definition of balance sheet probably means does it have to be some kind of 50/50 JV or less from your side? So that would imply fairly substantial infrastructure investor, could you also consider bringing into the party and maybe a wholesale operator as a kind of, as a kind of joint partner on a venture like that, could that be foreseeable?

I think it's safe to say David, that we're examining all options. And you should expect us to be doing that, and that this will take time. Those are two points I'd make. So yes, it would and could make sense, because obviously if you're going to build 7 to 10 million homes, while we believe, we could penetrate effectively at the 30% level as we seem to be doing effectively on our own lightning expansion, wouldn't it be materially better for a partner and financing if you could add additional operators onto that network, or drive greater penetration of network. So there's puts and takes there. But clearly, we would be interested in discussions not just with financial partners, but also with network operators, who are interested in the same opportunity. So I think, the answer to that question is yes, we would. And I just repeat that, this is not happening in the first quarter. This is not stuff that's going to occur overnight. This is a long game that needs to be played in the market. Remember that both BT and the altnets are virtually nowhere in the marketplace. Maybe they've built as many homes as us in the aggregate, but are our lightning machine at -- four or five thousand homes a year, is working like clockwork, with declining cost per premise and consistent top line and customer results. So even at just half million homes a year, we're going to keep driving the growth of the Virgin network. We ought to be looking at ways of supercharging that, but doing it in a manner that's consistent with our belief in levered free cash flow, and levered free cash flow per share. And I think that's achievable. It's not going to happen overnight, but it's the kind of thing we should be looking at and we're uniquely positioned to repeat that. Virgin is probably uniquely positioned to be the one to evaluate those types of opportunities, just another example where we sit in this U.K. market, and why our business we believe is worth a heck of a lot more than zero.

My follow up question if I can please Mike is, is given that BT is talking about ramping up potential build, by a factor of two, you know 25,000, 30,000 treating 50,000 a week. In the kind of midterm, is the capacity for you guys to kind of double your build as well? Is there actual capacity of the workforce required to take Rhodes to actually lay this cable, if BT is doubling that build, is the capacity less for you guys to do the same?

We think there is, and remember, if we were to and I’ll let Lutz chime in a little bit. If we were to expand beyond the lightening program, which is a fairly targeted program where we're extending network and it's a fairly intensive construction process. If we were to extend beyond that, and for example, the Liberty networks entity we set up were to build networks similar to say how CityFibre is building networks, that would be faster and more efficient using PAA and existing BT infrastructure. But Lutz, why don't you comment a little bit on the current supply situation in the U.K. on resources? Lutz Schüler: Yes. So I think we definitely get ourselves prepared to ramp up the build. Right, I mean, last year we've done 5000 [ph] premises. We are leveraging PIA. So we are definitely understanding how to use the ducts and folds of Openreach. So for that, we have secured all sorts of resources, and also we have just finalized a new RFP to ensure vendors and the partnerships for the future. And I think, like we have a good relationship built up over years with our vendor. And if you -- if you are a vendor in the U.K. you want to stand on two legs instead of one. So we haven't met really big vendors who only want to engage with one company. So therefore, I think, yes, it is a critical resource. And we are prepared to deal with it like that. And we have done some commitments to increase, to make sure that we are enabled for increased rollout for the next year.

Thank you, guys.

And our next question comes from the line of Nick Lyall from SocGen. Please go ahead.

Yes, morning. Just a simple one from me, please. Just only the buyback, Mike, on the $1 billion permission, why pick that number? I was just interested the number was down obviously versus the 10 the last year, the shares are pretty low now, does that mean there's maybe more of a focus on M&A rather than buyback, could you just walk us through that please? Thank you.

Sure. Sure. And as I mentioned in my remarks, Nick. Historically if you were to take a look at all of our buyback authorization in the past, they have more or less been of an equal quantum. So by that I mean, if you look at generally what we've done outside of the Dutch auction tender, we've normally announced at this point in time buybacks that equal roughly our free cash flow guidance and roughly you know 5% to 10% of our market cap. And so, here we're at about 8% of our market cap, and 100% of our free cash flow guidance. That's good discipline. That means that we're able to drive free cash flow back to shareholders. It doesn't mean that we won't do other buybacks. I'm not being specific about how quickly or how slowly we might put that capital to work and it wouldn't be a surprise to you that while we're certainly pleased, and believe that $27 a share was a smart decision on our part, and of course, we have information that you would have as well. But on the other hand, we know where our strategic opportunities are, and we believe, we know where value sits. So while for us, $27 a share was certainly a price we were willing to pay at 20 bucks, I wish we’d waited. So I think to some extent, we're looking to be smart here, and as to the timing of buybacks not simply to rush into a decision knee jerk, it's not necessarily a buyback or M&A decision on. As we look at it, we're sitting on 11 billion of liquidity, 8 billion of cash. I think, there's a lot of things that go into capital allocation, decisions on our part, but we think it's the right message today. It's not, doesn't mean we won't do additional buybacks, doesn't mean anything. It just means that we believe at this point, that's the right number to allocate, and we'll get at it. So there you go.

Great. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Ben Swinburne from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys. I will limit myself to I guess one question around the U.K. Last quarter, you gave us some nice disclosure on lightning financials within Virgin. There's some additional detail this quarter on their CapEx. I'm just wondering if we're at the point now where the free cash flow burn of that project has peaked or if we have kind of line of sight to when that shifts from maybe a free cash flow headwind to a free cash flow tailwind in the business as you guys continue to scale it? And then just broader on the UK for any of you. I don't know if now that Brexit is, I guess, largely behind us if you're starting to see sort of the economic headwinds because they hit your business at the consumer or business level abate a bit or even reverse as we head into as we're starting here in 2020?

Yes. On the Brexit question, while we did see modest consumer reaction to the uncertainty and the volatility in that political process. You should expect that we're seeing more optimism and I think the market generally is seeing more optimism in the clarity of the process today. Now it's still a moving target in terms of the final deal and all that, all those good things. But I would say, on balance, this is a positive for us resolution, clarity, general certainty and we should expect and we intend to see hopefully a more tailwinds in that regard then headwinds. Charlie, you can jump in here on the Lightning financials. But it's my recollection looking at the specific P&Ls that we have already are starting to see improvement in the negative free cash flow of that business with $120 million of EBITDA in 2019 that I believe grew around 40% year-over-year from the prior year opt to be growing. It's pretty material improvements in operating free cash flow. Go ahead, Charlie.

Yes. But that's also be clear. As Mike said, it's a very high -- well we believe it's a high return project. I appreciate there are others who are concerned. But in our minds the mass stack up and the performances is supporting that. So -- and you can work this out from the disclosures, we invested on OFCF basis about $320 million in 2019. The other number we disclosed here is the CapEx, we spent on construction. But remember we are also investing CapEx into CPE and like against 1.4 billion for the core business as usual. So that's the kind of quantum. It will get less in 2020 at least on our budget numbers it will, but it's still only a negative investment as we try and continue to support this rollout and build towards getting more scared in the market.

Right.

Sorry, Mike, but less negative. But I'd really rather not give specific guidance. But it won't be -- it'll be less than 320. Can I make that statement.

Thank you, guys.

And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Harrigan from Benchmark Please go ahead sir.

Thank you. Just one question, but it's a bit of a long question. I think VodafoneZiggo has just been a great template for fixed mobile convergence and we probably get more rational in pricing behavior there competitively as well getting the integration benefits and presumably with the small cell topology for 5G that just keeps getting better and better. But how much do you think you leave on the table on a fixed MVNO with Vodafone in 2012 versus getting everything done outright and putting the two businesses together. And also when you look at Vodafone dallying with Openreach and CityFibre and not having much of the back book and being aggressive on broadband pricing. Is there some scenario where just beyond limited financial engineering or an outright sale you could actually look at something in the U.K. or even Switzerland in terms of doing new JVs or taking someone else's equity as opposed to an outright cash sale today at the 11 time multiples --11x multiples that we saw in Germany et cetera?

Thanks Matt. That was actually a very clear question even though it was long as you say, but I'll say a couple things. Number one, on the Vodafone MVNO deal in the UK, both parties had an incentive to enter into that arrangement. On their part, clearly they saw an opportunity to drive revenue to their network and it's all incremental revenue to their network and that's a positive for them. And so they were very aggressive and willing to be aggressive with us on great pricing access to 5G. We think it saves us, I don't know, Lutz, I think we've said hundreds of millions in OCF over time. And so that was their motivation I believe and I'm sure they're trying to some extent to make us happy in the mobile space and maybe we don't do something somebody else. We'll see. I mean they weren't clear and we weren't discussing it with them on that basis. From our point of view it was purely an economic decision that if we're going to push fixed mobile convergence as an MVNO in the absence of any broader transaction as you've been implying why wouldn't we do it with someone who is willing to give us access to 5G in great pricing. So there was -- I say in mutual interest on both parties parts to do this deal and it's going to benefit us obviously materially going forward beyond 2020 when we really roll it out. In terms of what we are "leaving on the table" you would have read, I'm sure multiple analysts have estimated what the synergies might be if we were to acquire or be acquired by a mobile operator in the UK and the numbers I think range from 5 million to 6 billion pounds…

That's Mike.

And our next caller is coming from the line of Sam McHugh from Exane. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning guys. Just a quick read on the U.K. and TV. I guess you called out Sky's losses and yours as well. Do you think we've passed a bit of a tipping point in the U.K. in terms of traditional TV or do you can stabilize your subscriber base again? And then maybe if you just remind us how much gross profit you make on TV in the U.K. And with the broadband market being so competitive at the moment, do you think you can offset those TV losses with broadband prices? Thanks very much.

I'll let Lutz chime in here a little bit. I'll just simply say that, I don't -- there are very few pay TV markets in the first world if you will that aren't experiencing, obviously, the impact of direct-to-consumer streaming subscriptions, as well as I would say general cord cutting of cord shaving. You won't be able to find one and they don't exist. And that's okay. Certainly had an impact in Charter or Comcast and their ability to drive valuation and growth. I would say, as they have said broadband is the business, it's the one that generates essentially meaningful gross margin and is the product that you need whether you're subscribing to our video product or any video product. Having said that, we generate gross margin and I would say good gross margin on our video business in the U.K. arguably better gross margin than the U.S. guys and so it's worth protecting and we are doing all the things we think are necessary to protect it including rolling out our advanced user interface very shortly here called Horizon 4 to replace TiVo and be available on the V6 box, that's going to we think be transformational to the consumer experience in the same way X1 was for Comcast. And this is our basic --our version of RDK-based X1. And so, we are investing in the user experience. We are rapidly integrating apps into the box wherever we can. We've got Amazon. We've got YouTube. We've got Netflix. We are open for business when it comes to an app integration and that is going to make our platform we think sustainable and viable and even necessary for consumers who want to lean back, watch television and get access to whatever they're interested in by simply saying to their…

Awesome guys. Thanks very much.

And our next question comes from the line of Andrew Beale from Arete Research. Please go ahead.

Hi. I guess you've got $8 billion in cash and that's a pretty high proportion of your market cap, and probably says that there's pretty limited equity value implied for Virgin Media after you've sort of taken out the other assets and liabilities. So just wondering if you could weigh up your current thinking about the relative merits of various possible approaches to realizing value which could be spin offs, could be the Liberty networks infrastructure transactions that you've been mentioning earlier, your traditional approach of buybacks or M&A or anything else?

Yes. Well, I'd say, look it as a base case, I mean, you're correct by the way. We believe that there's -- you can get to our stock price, but pretty much ignoring Switzerland and the UK, which is highly questionable in our minds of course. But there are several ways to get there. And I would say we begin first and foremost with the base case business. So -- and as Charlie has said many times as we've all repeated many times, we believe we can generate good free cash flow and free cash flow per share out of these businesses including Virgin and sustainable free cash flow is in our minds, the metric that matters. So as a first instance, we hope to be able to convince you and others that simply the free cash flow yield on a market like the UK is worthy of a meaningful valuation especially if you consider Sunrise, Swisscom, even our own business, Telenet, and where those yields and multiples sit. So first and foremost, this is a bit of a transformation in thinking both for us and for investors that we believe there is sustainable free cash flow in the business without any transactions, without any inorganic moves to close the value gap that we know exists. That's -- that's step one. And I think we can achieve that and that's what we're focused on. Obviously there are multiple things we could be doing beyond that around you know for example as you describe monetizing our networks in a more creative way, looking at inorganic combinations whether with mobile or other operators that public listings, spin-offs are clearly if there's any company out there able and capable of and willing to look at creative ways to shrink the value gap you're talking to. So you should assume that is something we are working on every day, and trying to be both sensible but also creative and strategic about how we close that value gap. That's how I answer that question.

Okay. And just a quick follow up on the seven million to 10 million premises that you're talking about for the expanded U.K. infrastructure opportunity. I mean, it's quite a big volume of homes and it probably means quite a bit of overbuild of others. But just can I just clarify that, is that seven to 10 beyond two million Lightning as now or from the [Indiscernible] million end of Lightning? And is that actually….

Yes, in our minds it’s 7 to 10, yes. Good clarification. It's seven to ten from this point principally. Yes. And just to be -- just to add to your earlier question, certainly we could consider you know maybe lightning itself is an asset that should be lifted and shifted and you know be -- could and become the engine of that growth. So we've -- I would say it’s incremental to where we are today.

Okay. And that is all your build or is that a footprint ambition including you will build and then third party also?

Well, look in general terms, we believe the opportunity exists to economically consider expanding our network to seven to 10 million homes. The way in which you do it is to be determined, but that's what we think is an economic ambition.

Okay. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of James Ratzer from New Street Research. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning everyone. Thank you. Question regarding just kind of a follow on really from Andrew. It’s just around use of capital. I mean, it seems like the message from today is that although the kind of final structure of any U.K. network build out hasn't been finalized. It's clear that more capital is intended to be allocated towards U.K. network build. But I would have thought a lot of that could also be covered from your organic free cash flow. So it still leaves the question really, of how the $8 billion of liquidity that you have could be used. So I mean, it's just wondering if you can give us more thoughts on how M&A might feature in that. I mean, it's now six months since the Vodafone deal close. It will be interesting to understand, kind of what situations you've looked at? I mean there have been stories about Univision around in the press. Can you comment on how M&A might play a part in use of capital, if at all? And then just as a clarification, just regarding the £100 million of headwind in the U.K. which would be around kind of 5% of Virgin's OCF. Is that a headwind in addition to the 2019 trend, which was already down 2%. So we should be thinking about Virgin all else being equal down 7% OCF for 2020? Thank you.

I don't believe that's accurate in the £100 million. But Charlie, you can decide how you want to address that particular point. With respect to capital allocation, I think your first point is accurate. We do not intend to allocate significant balanced sheet capital to a build in the U.K. and don't believe it's necessary. So a combination of free cash flow and potentially third party financing sources would be the primary source of capital for that. It's an important clarification. While we think the opportunity is exciting and we think the need and the ability to drive Virgin to the rest of the marketplace is exciting. I don't believe we intend to allocate significant amounts of balance sheet cash to that. And don't believe we need to. It doesn't mean we won't put some cash into it, but simply to say that, you shouldn't assume we're opening up the spigot and pouring all that capital in the U.K. network build. That is not the intention. That wouldn't be consistent with our free cash flow objectives and it's not consistent with how we would consider allocating capital. Doesn't mean, we wouldn't put some to work, but it's not the principal source of that. So that's good clarification. I would say you know in a few calls ago or maybe two calls ago, we went through the buckets of capital allocation, and we identified those as being first and foremost capital structure with meeting buybacks. Well, we took, we put 3.2 billion of our capital to work in that category last year, certainly can't be accused of not paying attention to that category or we're being serious about our investment in that category. We took another 1.6 billion and de-levered that was the second category. We did delever in the Central…

Yes. You're trying to get me to give you guidance. Look, it's not 7%. That's far too high. Look, if you take 100 million, it's broadly minus four. I would actually say, it looks plus or minus is holding the thing flat, excluding those one-offs. And at some point, you know hope the British government takes his foot off his throat, and we get back to growth. I think it's true to the industry as a whole. I think, there's some myth about Virgin. Virgin actually from revenue growth. Yes, you take out lending, it's slightly down and maybe slight down this year with the end of contract I think. But actually it’s performing broadly in line with many of the other markets. And if you think of the revenue decline it’s largely to do with the video business, which is not a cash flow generator. I keep going much this point about free cash flow, it will be lost on either the capital intensity and Virgin of the video product is nothing like the capital intensity of the fulltime product. I think Virgin’s in much better shape than people realize.

And yes, thank you. Thanks for [Indiscernible] Chuck.

You got it. You got it. So I think, we're done operator, we'll pass. We’ve got another question?

We do sir. We have our last question comes from the line of Robert Grindle from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes thank you. Just slipped in there. May I ask about the distribution from VodafoneZiggo in full year '20. Do you still expect shareholder loan repayments? Or can the bulk of this be in dividends? And then if I may, just a follow up on the Project Lightning build cost. I think, you flagged it went down 20% on a per home basis, but it's still over £600. Now regardless of any new balance sheet of, off balance sheet vehicle to roll out more fiber, can you get the existing Project Lightning bill cost much closer to the CityFibre level using PIA? Thank you.

The answer to the second question is yes. I'll let Lutz prepare a quick response to that. Charlie, you want to talk about VodafoneZiggo's distributions?

I think, you're quite right to point out that the distributions are understated in our free cash flow number. If you dated back €100 million share of the loan repayment to us, and €100 would obviously went to Vodafone. In fact, in our free cash flow in 2019, but that should be much higher than the 70 odd number, more like 900. So that's a fair point. I think at this stage, they're planning not to repay the shareholder loan, that may change. It will be lost to me, but that's helpful from a tax planning point of view, but we will see. But I think certainly in our guidance we factored that in. And I think we've taken a relatively conservative view on distributions from VodafoneZiggo. Lutz Schüler: I mean on the -- on the Lightning build cost, Right, only to make sure that we compare apples-with-apples. The current lightning costs are 618 [ph]. And this is fibre-to-the-home, right. A lot of costs, which are disclosed by our competitor is actually fiber-to-the-cabinet and not really the last mile to the home is included there. That's number one. Number two is, as you said PIA is substantially cheaper now, be assured that if we are in the position to rollout additional seven to 10 million homes, we would absolutely leverage PIA. And why would we run it at a higher cost than our competitor. So therefore you can expect us to get the CPP further down leveraging PIA.

Many thanks.

Okay. Thanks Robert. Yes. I think that, I'm guessing that's it. Operator, so we appreciate everybody jumping on the call. I’ll just repeat what I said at the end of my remarks. We're focused on three primary things; sustainable free cash flow, we think the free cash flow story here is the most significant story and one that we will demonstrate over time is, is hopefully important to shareholders as well. Secondly, closing the value gap. I think, you know what that means, and you should expect that we're focused very seriously on opportunities to do that in core markets. And then thirdly, being disciplined about capital allocation, and I think the one billion we've allocated today to shareholder buybacks, it’s the beginning of that, but we will and we do intend to stay very disciplined about how we allocate that capital. I think that creates a lot of opportunity for us today, and down the road. So thanks for joining. And we'll speak to you soon. Take care.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global's fourth quarter 2019 investor call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of the Liberty Global's website. There you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials. Thank you.