Sky Profit Soars

LONDON: BSkyB’s profit for the first quarter rose by 75 percent from £73 million to £128 million, with revenues increasing by 10 percent to £1.38 billion and its customer base growing by 94,000 to reach 9.536 million homes.

“Our business has made a good start to our 2010 financial year with another quarter of strong results," said chief executive Jeremy Darroch. "In what continues to be a tough economic environment, we have increased the number of customers joining Sky. High definition has continued to perform very well and more customers are saving money by choosing Sky for each of TV, broadband and telephony. The strong operational performance is reflected in today’s financial results. We absorbed the short-term costs of customer demand and delivered double-digit revenue growth, 9 percent growth in operating profit, and 15 percent growth in EPS. As the year continues, we’ll maintain a clear focus on our customers and on delivering on our priorities, all with the aim of building a larger, more profitable, and better business.”

Net subscriber growth of 94,000 was up 8 percent on the year-ago period, but churn was also up, to 11.3 percent. Darroch said the factors behind that included "increased pricing on the DTH subscription; we restricted payment options available to customers in arrears wanting to rejoin Sky; and we swapped-out seven million viewing cards across the base as part of a routine replacement to maintain high standards of platform security."

Darroch also pointed to the increasing popularity of Sky’s additional products; multiroom subscriptions added 62,000 to reach 1.9 million; Sky+ HD PVRs gained 287,000 (last year it was 93,000) to reach 1.6 million, compensating for the slower growth of Sky+ SD PVRs, with additions of 411,000 (versus last year’s 421,000), reaching 5.9 million. The broadband base rose to 2.3 million, with 100,000 net additions, down from last year’s 164,000, and the telephony customer base added 132,000, up from 120,000, to reach 1.98 million. ARPU in the period rose from £430 to £469.