Half of Sky’s new additions in the December quarter were to its internet TV service NOW TV.
It marked a period where internet-delivered content grew significantly. Unique users of Sky Go increased by nearly 50% year-on-year with 3.1 million unique users in Q2.
BSkyB delivered a solid six month financial report with 10,358,000 subscribers to the DTH satellite service and NOW TV combined. Customers now take an average of 2.7 products from the paycaster, a penetration increase that is combined with September’s price increase, the first for two years.
Revenue was up 5% at £3,533 million and adjusted operating profit up 8% to £647m
The proportion of Sky households with fully-connected HD set-top boxes continues to grow. Just under half a million boxes (460,000) were activated in the quarter, taking the total number of connected boxes to 1.7 million.
Average weekly downloads more than doubled in the quarter from 1.8 million to 4.4 million by the end of December – more than four times the number of downloads 12 months earlier – with Sky content accounting for more than 50% of the downloads. The growth in connected boxes also led to an increase in the number of transactions through Sky Store, with total movie transactions surpassing 3 million in the quarter, up 25% year on year.
BSkyB continues to describe the consumer environment as “challenging” and saw churn rise to 10.3% from 9.6%. The many remaining with the paycaster added £24 to their total spend to deliver ARPU of £568.
132,000 new broadband customers were added, of which 38,000 were new standalone customers, to take the total customer base to 4.2 million. The telephony customer base passed the four-million mark for the first time with the addition of 134,000 customers.
