Sky UK Sees Stable Growth to Reach 5.53 Million Broadband Subscribers

Sky (Sky Broadband) has released their latest batch of Q1-2015 (calendar) results since they merged with Sky Italia (Italy) and Sky Deutschland (Germany), which reveals that they added +100,000 broadband subscribers for UK and Ireland in the quarter to total roughly 5.53 million (stable from the +106k added in Q4-2014 and up from +75k in Q3-2014).

As before Sky’s new consolidated results are a lot less informative than the much more detailed breakdown that we use to get for the United Kingdom. But look closely and you can still find some interesting bits of information.

For example, Sky’s UK broadband direct network costs grew by just 4%, although this is below the rate of home communications revenue growth as the operator “benefited from continued scale efficiencies across our network“. But Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) remains flat at £47 per month, although Churn fell from 10.5% in Q4-2014 to 10.1% in Q1-2015.

Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s Group CEO, said:

“We have delivered an excellent third quarter as customers across the enlarged Sky group respond to the quality and breadth of what we offer. In all, we attracted almost 70% more new customers than the prior year and over one million new products. By continuing the strong operating momentum of the first half, we have grown revenues by 5% and operating profit by 20% over the nine months.

The UK and Ireland delivered a stand-out performance, reporting both the highest customer growth and lowest churn for eleven years. We took share in broadband and grew strongly in TV as our dual-brand strategy with NOW TV and Sky continues to deliver. At the same time, Germany enjoyed another record quarter of growth and Italy posted its best Q3 customer growth in three years. We’ve also delivered significantly increased customer loyalty in each of our businesses.”

It’s also noted that the UK continues to deliver the largest share of group operating profit, growing by 14% to more than £1 billion. At the same time a quick look at Sky’s performance on the London Stock Exchange shows that the EU mergers and announcement of their O2 MVNO plans to launch a UK consumer mobile service in 2016 (here), not to mention the recent £4.1bn deal to secure the UK rights to 126 live Premier League matches (here), have had a positive impact.