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Mike Fries admits his company is looking at mobile and fixed acquisition opportunities, as well as organic growth.
Judging by comments made by CEO Mike Fries late last week, Liberty Global will continue its recent spending spree this year, with mobile, fixed, cable and possibly content assets on the shopping list.
"Maybe," Fries said in an interview with Bloomberg TV from Davos on Friday, when asked whether 2016 would be another year of big acquisitions for the ambitious cable group.
"We’re looking more at mobile assets, potentially, or some additional fixed assets," he said.
However, he kept his cards close to his chest when it came to naming names.
"We don’t have a pipeline that we’re willing to talk about," he said.
Fries did not rule out the acquisition of more cable operations.
"There’s still more cable to be consolidated," he said, referring to Europe in particular. "There’s still fragmentation in many countries."
Liberty Global is also interested in content companies, albeit it tentatively, with a view to driving advertising revenues among other things.
"We’re going to tread carefully in the content space," Fries said.
Liberty Global increased its stake in U.K. broadcaster and content producer ITV to 9.9% last summer and picked up a 3.4% stake in U.S. content company Lionsgate in November. Those small stakes have given it a window into the content world and a view on what opportunities might be available, Fries said.
"There are advertising opportunities," he said. "We’ve got 50 billion hours of viewing data and tens of billions of clicks every day and we don’t make any money on that," he said.
Liberty Global is also working on organic growth in Europe.
"We have 10 million-12 million homes that we can build out in Europe," he said.
Finally, some upbeat comments from Fries about the regulatory environment in Europe suggest that reports of an imminent green light from Brussels for its Base acquisition are likely correct.
"We’re closing a mobile acquisition in a couple of weeks," he said, without specifically referencing Belgium’s Base.
In general, "regulators in Europe have got it right," on issues such as net neutrality, consolidation, and the planned single telecoms market, he said.
Fries did not dwell on the consolidation issue though, focusing instead on net neutrality.
"[In Europe] we can manage our network and our bandwidth. We can provide specialised services. And [the likes of Netflix and Google] can do what they do," he said. "[European regulators] have struck a healthy balance there and the U.S. could certainly learn something."
