Sky has reported a strong start to its new financial year with 134,000 new customer additions, 937,000 new paid-for subscription products and 133,000 new broadband subscribers in the UK.
Group operating profit grew strongly, up 10% to £375 million.
Sky chief executive Jeremy Darroch said the strategy was to deliver popular content across multiple platforms. “We want to make the viewing experience even better for all our customers. Following the success of our proven connected home strategy in the UK and Ireland, we are beginning to roll this out across our other territories. We now have almost 10 million connected households across the group, driving over 750 million views to our connected services this quarter alone.
Sky’s connected platform has grown by 2.3 million homes year on year to reach 9.6 million homes across the group. This has resulted in a 33% increase in total views across connected services.
Sky Store revenues were up 50% year on year, with over one million unique customers using the Buy & Keep service since launch.
Total retail customers in the UK and Ireland grew from 12,001,000 at the end of June to 12,078,000; in Germany and Austria – see separate story – numbers went from 4,280,000 to 4,374,000; while in Italy subscribers dipped from 4,625,000 to 4,688,000 as the subscriber erosion of the last two years continued.
Churn remains good at 9.8%, 9.0% and 10% across the UK and Ireland, Germany and Austria and Italy respectively. ARPU at £47, €34 and €42 per month remains stable. Said Darroch: “While I know ARPU’s not racing away, it’s growing and we’re balancing the mix of selling more broadband, more Now TV, with growth in DTH. It’s across the piece that we’re able to get better quality metrics than we had before”.
Commenting on the results Paolo Pescatore, Director, multiplay and media at CCS Insight said: “Sky has made a great start to its new fiscal year. Despite increased competition in all markets, Sky has increased subscribers, revenue and profit. Italy remains an ongoing challenge, but its UK operations performed well.”
Sky is the first of the three big beasts to report with Liberty Global (Virgin Media) and BT due to declare in the next few days.
