New Zealand Sky PVR installations reach 100k in 2Q09

Friday, August 21st, 2009
SKY Television logo

SKY Network Television Limited (“SKY”) [NZX: SKT] announced today the result for the year ended 30 June 2009, being a net profit after tax of $88.1 million.

Subscribers

SKY has continued to increase its total subscriber base in the year to 30 June 2009, adding a net 30,326 subscribers, an increase of 4.1%. This compares to the 37,365 net subscribers added in the comparative period.

During the year 4,862 (15.4%) subscribers migrated from the UHF to the satellite network, compared to 17,153 (31.56%) in the previous year. SKY stopped marketing its UHF service in 2008 due to the planned decommissioning of this network in 2010.

There were 23,172 subscribers on the UHF network at 30 June 2009, compared to 742,991 subscribers on the DBS satellite platform and Telstra’s cable network. There were 12,739 “other” subscribers which includes subscribers to SKY’s commercial music business SKY DMX Music and its online DVD rental business, Fatso.

In addition to these subscribers, there were 7,800 subscribers to “SKY Mobile TV” on the Vodafone 3G mobile phone network at 30 June 2009, compared to 8,427 at 30 June 2008.

Churn

Churn is a measure of the percentage of subscribers who disconnect their service either voluntarily or due to a failure to pay their account. SKY calculates churn on a rolling gross annual basis, which means that each month we calculate the subscribers who have disconnected as a percentage of the average subscribers for that month and total these monthly percentages over the preceding 12 months.

Annual gross churn has decreased to 14.0% during the 2009 year from 14.9% last year. This decrease in churn reflects lower churn of 9.9% in MY SKY homes compared to churn of 14.3% in standard digital homes.

MY SKY churn has the potential to drop below this level as some of the higher churn months can be attributed to specific marketing campaigns that were offered during the launch of the MY SKY HDi services and these will not be repeated.

MY SKY HDi

The new My SKY HDi decoder was launched in August 2008. At 30 June 2009, 85,681 MY SKY HDi decoders had been installed. The total number of MYSKY decoders installed at 30 June 2009, including the original standard definition decoders launched in December 2005, was 103,991. 21% of MY SKY installs in 2009 were to new SKY subscribers.

Freeview NZ

SKY’s satellite decoders are able to receive the FreeView satellite signals and Sky now carries all of the national FreeView satellite channels on its platform.

Wholesale Partnerships

SKY currently wholesales its pay television services with telecommunication companies Telstra Clear, Vodafone and Telecom, who bundle SKY’s services with their telephony and broadband offerings.

Subscribers (‘000):

                               2008   2009  % Change
                              -----  -----  --------
UHF Residential                31.1   22.8   (26.7%)
DBS (Satellite) Residential   578.1  623.6      7.9%
DBS Wholesale                 120.2  111.3    (7.4%)
Commercial/Other               19.2   21.3     10.9%
                              -----  -----  --------
  Total Subscribers           748.6  779.0      4.1%

More: Earnings Release