BSkyB says it has won a net 90,000 new customers in the fourth quarter, up 17 per cent year-on-year after a successful launch into broadband, boosting the British satellite broadcaster's shares to a three-year high.
Chief executive James Murdoch told reporters BSkyB was seeing the fastest growth in new TV customers that it had seen for years and was on target to achieve its long-term aims of 10 million customers by 2010 and 3 million broadband customers in three or four years' time.
"We're now the nation's fastest-growing broadband provider, we're the only residential voice provider of any scale to see growth in a little while and that's hugely exciting," Murdoch claimed.
BSkyB shares were up 5.2 per cent at 707 pence by 9.45am, having risen as high as 710-1/2p - their highest since March 2004.
The group signed 349,000 gross subscribers, the highest fourth-quarter number in six years, to take its total to 8.6 million. It signed 259,000 broadband customers to give a total of 716,000, slightly above its original target.
It said it would enter 2009 growing at an accelerated rate. The company said churn, or the number of customers leaving the service, had fallen to 12.1 per cent from a previous 13.7 per cent.
BSkyB launched its broadband service last year bundled with its pay-TV service in a bid to retain customers and Murdoch told reporters that one in three broadband customers were new to the company.
Analysts, who had been expecting net customer additions of 60,000, said BSkyB's strategy to offer broadband and telephony was driving its growth, while analysts at brokerage Numis said it had reinvigorated growth in the core pay TV business.