Sky Group has seen its highest third quarter growth in the UK and Ireland for 11 years and the best on Italy for three years.
Announcing its results for the nine months to March 31, 2015, the company said Germany and Austria had also seen a record growth rate (see separate story).
A total of 242,000 new customer additions were made in the first three months of the calendar year, delivering a 5% increase in group revenue to £8,453 million and a 20% increase in operating profit to £1,025 million.
The UK & Ireland brings 11,877,000 retail customers; Germany & Austria 4,225,000 and Italy 4,746,000 to make a total subscriber base of 20,848,000.
Jeremy Darroch, Group Chief Executive, said that five months after the integration of Germany and Italy into the UK business, integration plans were progressing: “The UK and Ireland delivered a stand-out performance, reporting both the highest customer growth and lowest churn for eleven years. We took share in broadband and grew strongly in TV as our dual-brand strategy with NOW TV and Sky continues to deliver. At the same time, Germany enjoyed another record quarter of growth and Italy posted its best Q3 customer growth in three years. We’ve also delivered significantly increased customer loyalty in each of our businesses.”
Part of the success rests with building additional businesses around the core offering. Among these Sky Store has now seen more than half a million customers purchase one or more movies from Sky since the launch of the service.
NOW TV has witnessed subscriber growth up 30% on the same period last year; sports transactions have trebled with over 1 million year to date and include a record 36,000 on the day of the Liverpool vs Manchester United clash in March.
