Satellite broadcaster BSkyB, Britain's largest pay-TV company, said today its third-quarter profits climbed but that subscriber growth slowed ahead of new product roll-outs later this year.
The company said pretax profit for the three months to March 31 was £219 million (€318 million) compared with £203 million (€256 million) a year earlier.
Revenues rose 11 per cent to 1.06 billion pounds following a price rise last year. BSkyB added 40,000 subscribers to its market-leading pay-TV platform for a total of about 8.1 million, short of analysts' median estimate of 45,000, according to a Reuters poll of 10 brokerages.
The company said it expects to add 60,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter.
"The market may be slightly disappointed with net additions of 40,000, but the company has reiterated its next quarter's guidance," said Exane BNP Paribas analyst Philip Guest.
The company has said that subscriber additions will be heavily weighted toward the second half of calendar 2006.
Its shares were 1.8 per cent down at 520p by 7:01am. The annualised average revenue per subscriber, known as ARPU, was £392 in the third quarter, up £10 from the year-ago period but £5 lower than the second quarter.
BSkyB, 37.9-per cent owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media conglomerate, is planning to roll out a new high definition (HD) service later this month and a new broadband offering in the summer, which it hopes will boost ARPU.
Churn, or the percentage of customers who left the service, rose 0.8 percentage points to 11.4 per cent in the quarter, for a nine-month total of 11.3 per cent.
BSkyB last week won three of six packages of rights to broadcast English Premier League football, with the remaining packages to be awarded in a second round of bidding that could include its cable rival NTL and Irish pay-TV operator Setanta.
Sky has grown into Britain's dominant pay-TV company with a major assist from the exclusive broadcasting rights to top-flight British soccer. Citing confidentiality agreements, the company said it would not comment until the conclusion of the process.