Sky profit rises 16%

Friday 20th August 2010

Sky Network Televisions lifted full-year profit by 16% as a line up of sports events and tough economic conditions made TV a more attractive form of entertainment.

Net income rose to $146.5 million, or 26.43 cents a share, from $125.8 million, or 22.71 cents a year earlier, the company said in a statement today. Sales rose 7.2% to $741.8 million.

Sky TV lifted its subscriber base by a net 23,495 to 802,397 in the latest year, while managing to hold its churn rate – the percentage of subscribers who disconnect –to 13.9% from 14%.

The churn rate on its MY Sky box was 10.1% while for standard digital decoders it was 14.8%. The churn rate “should continue to drop” as My Sky penetration increases, the company said.

Viewing increased on both Sky channels and free-to-air, which is “quite common during recessions when more people are spending more time at home watching television,” Sky said. Sky’s share of overall viewing slipped to 28.2% from 28.6%, which the company put down to Prime being added to the FreeView platform.

Pay-per-view programming on its satellite platform fell to about 1.7 million purchases from 1.8 million, which reflected increased use of recorded content on My Sky decoders as a substitute.

The shares slipped 0.8% to $4.88 and have declined 4% this year, outperforming the NZX 50’s 7% decline.

Businesswire.co.nz

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