now comcast beats out 21st Century Fox for sky with a thirty nine billion dollar bid but is it paying just too much our senior deals reporter ed Hammond raised that question earlier than another than Liberty Global CEO in Denver it's an extraordinary price I would say it's a great outcome for Sky Cheryl there's a considerable premium and I think it also validates to a large degree the value of European paid TV and broadband I mean there's a huge disconnect between public and private multiples we sold some assets to Vodafone at eleven and twelve times this
deals happening at fifteen and a half times so my first you know reaction is it validates our business model and what we're doing my advice to Brian would be stay rational the UK market is a highly rational market very competitive very promotional and transactional but rational I think you'll have to stay rational when you put that kind of money out but you know we're excited for the competition we have a 50% market share broadband and pay-tv on our footprint and the rest of the customers are shared between sky and BT and other operators so on
our footprint which is 14 million homes we feel really solid and secure and of course we're good partners with Sky we buy the content Football premium movies and of course their basic content so it's a it's a collaborative and rational market although we're you know we're healthy competitor so stay rational give it some time you know and you know I think the price is terrific let's talk about the competition for a second so under Murdoch's Co I was sort of capped in terms of doing a huge amount of expansion because of the UK media laws
now you have a new player in the form of Comcast very aggressive and ambitious wanting to expand in Europe what does that mean what challenges does that present it of the global not really any it you know where are they operating today they're in the UK and they're in Germany and they're not in Italy principally and you know yeah we're not in Italy we've just decided to exit the German market and so UK is really where we'll square up listen the European market is is a solid market for the space we're in it compared to
the US there's massive differences a video is still highly relevant and relatively inexpensive so there's a lot of OTT players in the marketplace but they're you know varying degrees of success and of course video is very inexpensive in Europe and you live there you remember you were a virgin customer you told me you know 450 pounds you can get 300 megabits broadband speed hundreds of channels everything on your mobile phone that you want on your mobile phone and the mobile phone from us as well voice services it's a pretty rational and I wants the inexpensive
market for consumers consumers are winning in Europe so from that point of view I don't see yeah I don't know what their next move will be but in the markets they're in and we really just you came into most of us now Liberty has a windfall coming its way in the form of twelve billion dollars which is the proceeds from the Vodafone deal in Germany I know what you're going to say FRC what you're spending on which is you're not going to know until you get it probably some point next year so let me ask
this if you were to have that money today what would you spend it on it's a good question listen I think we're pretty good allocators of capital if you look at our history we've made that with a great success buying building and integrating businesses Germany being an excellent example of that for two billion euros in we're gonna get twelve thirteen billion euros out I mean it's we know how to build operate and grow businesses but we're not Empire builders right so we're more about the creating value and where I see value today quite frankly it's
our stock which trades that you know mid-single digits depending on how you want to do the math compared to twelve or fifteen times as we're seeing it I just want to drill on that for a second because yeah as you say if I look at your stock it's at about six times Evy I look at the sky do and it goes through it fifteen times whatever investors not giving you credit for well I think there were in an interesting moment here at an inflection point we don't yet have the capital what will we do with
the capital I think if you look at our business today really it's gonna be pro forma for the deal about fifty sixty percent the UK that we believe is a solid growth business since we've owned it we've done five percent needed of growth every year on average and we see really good solid growth going forward we have a few other markets Switzerland Belgium and Holland that are in different states of maturity and we have different strategic optionality but the UK and the cash these are the main main businesses for us going forward and we love
the profile of our free cash flow and operating free cash flow going forward so they can be missing a lot of thing you go through rotation and shareholders maybe people thought there was going to be a big exit to Vodafone so now they're rotating out into something else people who believe in long-term value creation will own our stock and I think we'll stay in our stock and I'm not selling the stock so I love it long-term and so does John so does it make sense to become sort of more of a UK pure player over
time if these other markets did you say that not listen I think it's just by definition the UK is our largest operating market has always been and now will be even larger which I'm really excited about because it's a market where we see great growth potential we have a strategically complete asset in Virgin Media with you know the best video offering of all fastest broadband Mobile's to 3 million mobile subs so I think we've got a great opportunity in the UK and it will remain the biggest growth engine and the fact that the growth profiles
changing to not just even dog Road but free cash and operating free cash flow growth going forward because we've really invested in our products and services and customers in the last few years I think is everything yeah we've really leaned into our customers on capacity and products and and network expansion and the fact that a lot of that we're going to start advertising and monetizing to me is a terrific time to jump on so now is so much in the UK at the moment how do you play the brexit situation because you kind of have
no choice right whichever way it goes whatever deal is struck ultimately you're there for the long haul so what's the what what do you want to see happen there well what we all want to see happen is a rational conclusion that there the negotiations with speed now that's a wishful thinking perhaps I don't know for us it's not whatever happens the impact to us will be more on consumers and the trickle-down effect on consumers then on trade or moving technology across borders things of that nature so we're really focused on the net impact of consumers
and a little bit of disruption you know could result here when there's uncertainty long term I think the UK is a strong economy we know that it will there will be an outcome that probably everybody's happy with here and it'll take time but in the meantime that uncertainty could be a bit unstable just for consumers and for businesses we're still investing capital we're not any less committed to the marketplace but we'll all have to be patient to see what happens here and that was the sea of Liberty global speaking with our Edie Hammond in dense
