BSkyB, the UK-based, News Corp-controlled pay-TV provider, today posted record profits for the year, rising 14 percent to £1.2 billion ($1.9 billion) in the 12 months that ended June 30. Full-year revenues were £6.8 billion ($10.4 billion), a rise of three percent on 2011. Earnings per share were also up: they are now at 50.8 pence ($0.79), a rise of 22 percent.
While BSkyB has built its business on a satellite-based pay-TV service hooked on exclusive sports broadcasting rights, it’s laying groundwork for how it will ensure it remains a dominant company even as people move to new platforms: BSkyB also revealed the value of its investment in streaming-box provider Roku, announced yesterday — it’s $10 million — and gave a bit more detail on its plans for rolling out its service to Roku and other OTT services via its new Sky NOW product. And BSkyB also announced today some international expansion: it will begin to offer its triple-play service of broadband, phone and pay-TV in Ireland.
Overall, it was a strong set of results for the company after what has been a difficult year PR-wise — an attempted full takeover by News Corp got scuppered after UK officials stepped in in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal and worries of News Corp dominance; it lost chairman James Murdoch in the process. Although it did cap things off very well, with the Sky-sponsored cycling team winning the Tour de France.
Average revenues per user are up to £548 , churn is down to 9.9% and it added 57,000 new customers bringing its total to 28.4 million users across all products. Within that it said it had 10.6 million customers using Sky pay-TV, and four million taking its broadband service.
The plans to go triple-play in Ireland — extending its existing pay-TV service via a wholesale agreement with BT — is to build on a product that has served BSkyB well in its home market. Back in May, during its last set of earnings, BSkyB announced that it had overtaken Virgin Media as the UK’s biggest triple-play provider. The Irish product will initially cover 1.6 million homes, the company said.
But while Sky has revealed strong results for the past year, it is also laying the groundwork for more further investments ahead. It says that it will invest £30 million ($46 million) in marketing in launching its OTT service Sky NOW on new platforms. Those will include iPhone, iPad and Xbox “within the next month”; on YouView “when it launches” and other platforms like Sony PlayStation 3 and Roku “later this year.” It is already available via PCs, Macs, and some, but not all, Android smartphones. It didn’t specify the costs to develop the service, and whether those have been reflected in this year’s or next year’s results.
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