Sky has strong third quarter

Sky has released its financial figures for the nine months ending 31 March 2011, revealing strong growth for the company. Revenues for the past nine months rose 14% to £4.8bn. In the January to March period, revenues grew 13% to £1.46bn.

It now has 10.1 million customers with 51,000 net additions during the past quarter, and 47% more HD customers that the same period last year, at 3.7 million.

26% of customers now take all three Sky services of TV, broadband and telephony.

The company has recently launched Sky Atlantic and Sky Living as well as its Sky Anytime+ video on demand product, which has access to hundreds of movies and TV box sets at no extra monthly cost.

Jeremy Darroch, chief executive, commented: “The business has delivered another good performance in what has clearly been a tough consumer environment and we are benefiting from the transition to more broadly based growth. Good progress on multiple fronts is translating into strong financial results with double digit growth in revenue, profit and cash flow.

“At a time of significant pressure on household budgets, we have added over 800,000 subscription products as more customers choose Sky for a greater variety of services. Take-up of high definition remains very strong and we have had another excellent quarter in home communications, with 26% of customers saving money by taking all three of TV, broadband and home phone.”