ISP Sky Broadband UK Grows to 4.39 Million Subscribers

Sky Broadband (BSkyB) has today published their latest financial results to 31st March 2013 (Q1-2013), which reported another quarterly increase of +152,000 in their fixed line broadband ISP subscriber base to total 4,387,000 customers (up sharply from the +132k added in Q4-2012 and +102k in Q3-2012).

Sadly Sky still refuse to divulge precisely how many of their broadband customers have taken the operators latest superfast “Unlimited Fibre” broadband (FTTC) package, which is frustrating when both BT and TalkTalk seem happy to boast about it (if any Sky shareholders would like to formally request this detail then we’d be most appreciative).

Elsewhere Sky has now unbundled 2,202 telephone exchanges (up from 2,108 in Q4-2012) away from BT and 3,159,000 of their customers are now on the cheaper fully unbundled (MPF) platform, while 1,031,000 use the shared unbundled (SMPF) platform. Today just 197,000 subscribers are left on the BTWholesale based network (usually because Sky’s LLU network isn’t available to them).

Jeremy Darroch, CEO of BSkyB, said:

“We have had a good third quarter and our multi-product strategy is delivering strong results. Increased take-up across our product set led to another improvement in financial performance with growth in revenues and profits accelerating in the third quarter. Group revenues are up 6%, operating profit up 9% and earnings per share up 16% for the first nine months.

Despite the tough consumer environment, we added 715,000 more subscription products in three months, taking the total past 30 million for the first time. On the back of this growth, we are creating 550 new jobs to meet demand for our products and serve our growing customer base.”

It should be said that the acquisition of O2 UK and BE Broadband’s consumer internet access and fixed line telephony business has only just completed and thus it won’t show up in results until later this year (including any exceptional costs incurred as a result of the transaction).

Finally Sky’s Line Rental service also grew to reach a total of 4,056,000 (up from 3,870,000 in Q4-2012) and revenue stood at £5,381 million. The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) per year also grew to £576 from £568 in the previous quarter, although Churn increased to 10.8% from 10.3% over the same period.