Sky Deutschland has emerged from the first quarter with increased subscription revenues and falling churn, but increased losses.
Total revenues of €234.7 million were marginally ahead of the €232.7 million in the first quarter of 2009. However, negative EBITDA went from €29.8 million to €64.5 million over the 12 month period. The company recorded a pre-tax loss of €97 million from €80 million in Q1 2009.
Gross subscriber additions of 123,000 were reduced by churn of 21%, leaving net subscriber growth of 1,000, an improvement on the 28,000 loss of 12 months ago. Churn itself has been reduced by 1.4 percentage points.
A key figure is the ARPU (average revenue per unit), up by €4 year-on-year to €28.85, and underlining the point made by CEO Brian Sullivan at last week’s ANGA Cable conference that the old pricing structure simply wasn’t sustainable.
Commenting on the results, Sullivan said he was impressed by the progress that had been made so far. “Much has been achieved in the first nine months since the launch of Sky, but there is still much to do. These new innovations are the next step to add value to our proposition, satisfaction to our customers and further differentiate Sky as the best choice for entertainment in Germany and Austria. Sky Deutschland is the only real premium content broadcaster in the market, leading in sports, movies and High Definition. Our customers deserve better TV and we deliver it to them day in and day out. And we will be introducing even more exciting consumer oriented innovations in the future.”
It will now be up to initiatives that include the Sky+ PVR and the Multitroom facility to draw in new subscribers and further increase ARPU.