Lehman Brothers has upgraded its advertising, subscriber and earnings forecasts for BSkyB, following a strong set of first quarter results, released earlier this month (see BSkyB Back In The Black Following Strong Subscriber Growth).
The broker has raised its advertising growth forecasts from 3% to 10% for the full year 2003, implying revenue of £276 million. Subscriber numbers are predicted to grow by 90,000 to 6.8 million and customer revenue by £60 million to £2.3 billion. Alongside this growth, programming costs are expected to fall by 6% by the group’s 2007 financial year.
These upgrades to Sky’s operating performance come despite a background, over the last two years, of near-term downgrades related to cable wholesale, ITV Digital, advertising and interactivity, says Lehman.
