BSkyB Results for the three months ended 30 September 2008
Friday, October 31st, 2008In the three months to 30 September 2008 (“the quarter”) net British Sky Broadcasting (LSE:BSY) DTH growth was 87,000, taking our total base to over nine million customers (9.067 million). Despite the challenging consumer environment, customer growth was strong in the quarter with new additions 2% higher than the prior year at 334,000. As expected, churn was impacted by our annual price rise in September and increased from the fourth quarter to 10.9%. Compared with the prior year however, churn fell by 40 basis points.
Gross product sales for the quarter were 1.5 million, up 16% on the previous quarter or 14% year on year. Of these, 55% of Sky+ additions, 22% of Sky+ HD additions and 53% of broadband additions were new Sky customers.
Product penetration continued to increase with 58% of customers now choosing an additional product, compared to 42% in the comparative period. In particular, Sky+ households increased strongly by 421,000 to reach 4.1 million customers, or 46% of our base. Multiroom penetration was 18%, with net additions of 51,000.
We continue to make good progress in high definition. Continued efficiency in our supply chain through our acquisition of Amstrad has enabled us to take steps to accelerate HD growth; we reduced the retail price of Sky+ HD in July by £99 to £150. This was met with increased demand, with total customers increasing by 93,000 in the quarter to reach 591,000. During October we launched a further seven HD channels, bringing the total to 26 channels broadcasting, in aggregate, around 10,000 hours of HD content per month.
We added 164,000 broadband customers during the quarter, taking the base to almost 1.8 million. One in five Sky customers now takes one of our broadband products.
Customer Metrics (‘000s):
As at As at Net 30-Sep-08 30-Jun-08 additions --------- --------- --------- Total customers(1)(2) 9,067 8,980 87 Additional products: Sky+(3) 4,135 3,714 421 Sky+ HD 591 498 93 Multiroom(4) 1,655 1,604 51 Broadband 1,792 1,628 164 Telephony 1,361 1,241 120 Other KPIs: Churn (annualised) 10.9% 9.8% - ARPU £430 £427 -
1. DTH customers include only primary subscriptions to Sky (no additional Sky+ or Multiroom subscriptions are counted). This does not include customers taking Sky’s freesat offering or churned customers viewing free-to-air channels
2. DTH customers include customers taking Sky packages via DSL through Tiscali TV
3. Sky+ includes HD households
4. Multiroom includes households subscribing to more than one digibox. (No additional units are counted for the second or any subsequent Multiroom subscriptions within one household.)
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