BSkyB's CEO, Jeremy Darroch, said:

"Sky has had an excellent year of delivery for both customers and shareholders. We have stayed focused on executing our plan and customers have responded by rewarding us with more of their business. Today’s announcement of a capital returns programme is a reflection of our strong performance and financial position, which flow directly from delivering for customers in the marketplace. With that in mind, we will stay focused on getting better on screen, innovating faster and delivering great value.

In the fourth quarter, the business has delivered another strong operational and financial performance despite the challenging economic backdrop. Across the year as a whole, our growth has been broadly based, with double-digit increases in retail and business-to-business revenue and almost four million product sales across television and home communications. Combined with our focus on operational efficiency, this performance has led to excellent financial results, including 23% growth in operating profit, record earnings of 41.6p per share and 51% growth in free cash flow.

While Sky is not immune to tougher economic conditions, we have continued to see good demand across our product portfolio as customers respond to the great quality and value that we offer. The performance in home communications was particularly strong as we continue to grow all product lines. Over the year, we increased the number of customers taking all three of TV, broadband and telephony by 37% and extended our potential reach by selling home communications products independently from television for the first time. We now have over 100,000 customers taking standalone broadband and telephony products and we see plenty of scope for continued growth."