Anyone who was anticipating a set of sluggish results, if only on TV additions, will be reading BSkyB’s 12-month results several times over.
Adding a new layer of granularity to its figures, Sky attracted 34,000 new TV customers in the quarter to June 30, 2013, 134,000 on the year.
However, it is the 425,000 new internet connected boxes that have been added in the last quarter alone as customers hook up their Sky+ HD receivers to view not only subscription content, but that from the four UK public service broadcasters.
In all there are 11.2 million retail customers, an increase of 341,000 on the quarter, including 290,000 O2 customers new to Sky following the acquisition of the mobile operator’s home broadband and telephony business.
Revenues of £7,235 million, were up 7%, EBITDA stood at £1,692 million, up 8% and operating profit was £1,330 million, up 9%.
ARPU continued to rise to £577, up £29 on last year. Quarterly annualised churn was 10.9%. A further 117,000 HD customers were added and 122,000 Sky Go Extra customers, bringing the total to 166,000 paying customers. For £5 a month, this lets customers register up to four devices per account and download movies and TV shows to watch offline.
The new transactional element of NOW TV, the sports day pass, got off to a good start as more than 50,000 individual users purchased day passes in the first three months.
Sky announced plans to step up the rollout of connected TV boxes, by offering a low-cost wireless connector to customers that have a Sky+HD box but haven’t yet connected it to broadband. There are also plans to launch a new Wi-Fi enabled Sky+HD box as standard from September, rolling it out to targeted groups of customers who don’t yet have Sky+HD boxes.
Separately, a low-cost NOW TV box, based on the Roku design is being launched to upgrade standard TV sets to the pay-as-you-go service.
Over 2.7 million Sky customers, more than a quarter of total customers, have already connected their Sky+HD boxes to broadband, a rise of 170% on last year.