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BSkyB Q3 profit at £3 million

Indiantelevision.com Team

(4 May 2009 4:30 pm)

MUMBAI: BSkyB has announced that it made a profit of £3 million for the third quarter ended 30 March 2009 as compared with its £6 million loss in the same period last year.

For the nine-month period it reported an operating profit of £622 million, an increase of 23 per cent.

Revenues were up by seven per cent to £3.96 billion. The company adds that good progress in costs helped to offset upfront investment of meeting record demand for Sky+HD.

In the nine-month period the company managed net customer growth of 80,000, up 43 per cent from the prior year, to reach 9.318 million households. It says that there was positive customer response to Sky+HD with 243,000 net additions.

Now over one million Sky households take HD. Sky+ surpasses 5 million households with 406,000 net additions in the quarter. 1.4 million customers, 15 per cent of the base, now take all three of TV, broadband and telephony, up from 0.8 million in the prior year.

BSkyB adds that it invested in content with 33 HD channels and acquired key rights in sports, movies and entertainment.

BSkyB CEO Jeremy Darroch says, “Strong growth in customers and ARPU has seen revenue increase by seven per cent. We are further improving our operational efficiency whilst continuing to invest in customerfacing areas. So despite the higher upfront cost of meeting record demand for Sky+HD, we delivered a 13 per cent increase in operating profit in the period."

Net customer additions for the quarter were 80,000, 43 per cent higher than the rate in the prior year, taking the total base to 9.318 million. Gross customer additions were 13 per cent higher year on year at 327,000 and churn was 10.6 per cent, broadly in line with the prior year.