BSkyB posts better than expected Q1 results

BSkyB reported strong first-quarter earnings growth today (1 November) as price rises and the sale of additional products to subscribers helped reassure investors who had been fearing a slowdown.

In the first three months of its new financial year, BSkyB signed up 48,000 new households, in line with forecasts, with 20,000 additions to the core pay-TV offering.

That is someway off the often 100,000-plus pay-TV subscribers it used to sign up per quarter but the group said one in three of its customers now took TV, broadband and telephony services, which helped to lift the average amount each customer spent with the group.

The solid operating performance, the price rise and a share buyback programme helped lift earnings per share 16%, while revenue rose 4% to £1.7 billion and adjusted operating profit climbed 5% to £310 million.

Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said: “We have made a strong start to the year, delivering another good quarterly performance and continuing to position the business for the long term.”

Darroch added: “We continue to offer customers greater flexibility in the ways in which they can access our content with a growing proportion of households now having fully-connected set-top boxes. Around 1.3 million households have activated our full on-demand service by connecting their Sky+HD box to the internet and on average are downloading more than three pieces of on-demand content per week.”

Analysts had been expecting a disappointing number of new customer additions due to the tough economy and the fact that the business is becoming more mature after years of rapid growth.

A snapshot of customers compared to last year is tabled below. For full historical BSkyB customer data by quarter please visit MediaTel’s Connected Consumer product.