Sky profits drop, but Sky Go and Broadband packages boost figures

Sky has announced an 8 per cent drop in year-on-year profits, despite its continued push on Sky Go and broadband helping to boost figures.

Making the announcement during its annual profits call, broadcast and internet giant Sky has revealed that despite an 8 per cent annual decline in profits, more than 36 per cent of Sky customers now choose to take TV, telephone and broadband from the company.

Subscribers to the company’s flagship TV service have remained stagnant for the second year running (from 10.2 million in 11/12 to 10.4 million now), but there’s been a rapid growth in connected TV services and broadband packages.

The firm has reported 3.4 million customers now have Sky HD boxes, with numbers of internet connected box users growing by 50,000 a week. In addition, On Demand usage has quadrupled and movie rentals have also doubled.

Another flourishing section of the company is its mobile TV service Sky Go. More than 40 per cent of Sky Sports viewers watched via the network this year and there have been 219,000 net additions to Sky Go Extra, the company’s video download to device service.

It’s also been a successful year for Sky Broadband, which now has more than 5 million customers, with a  quarterly subscriber increase of 9 per cent.

“We are making excellent progress against the plan we set out in July to accelerate growth and returns from new services,” said chief executive Jeremy Darroch.

“We have made a very good start to the year. Strong growth across the board drove a 7 per cent increase in revenues and we added 50 per cent more new subscription products than last year as customers continued to respond to the quality and value we offer,” he stated.

“While the consumer environment remains challenging, we are well placed as we execute a strong set of plans for the rest of the year.”

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