Yahoo News Sky News Owner Reports 12% Rise In Profits
The owner of Sky News has announced a 12% rise in group full-year operating profit, and reported that revenue in its home markets of the UK and Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) passed £8bn for the first time.
Sky plc (LSE: BSY.L - news) , the home and mobile entertainment and communications company, said adjusted earnings in the year to 30 June were £1.56bn, up from £1.4bn a year earlier. Group revenue was up 7% to £11.96bn.
The strong performance included the addition of more than 800,000 new customers across Sky's business, which includes broadband, telecoms products and pay-television services.
In total, the company sold 3.3 million new products during the financial year, taking its overall product base to more than 57 million.
Sky said its international strategy was ahead of plan, and announced plans to launch Sky 1, its flagship entertainment channel, in Germany, with an exclusive series of Masterchef, the cookery show.
That move is aimed at strengthening the company's pay-TV proposition in what remains a comparatively under-penetrated market for such services.
Sky added that it would also launch Ultra HD services in the UK and Germany during the current year.
Jeremy Darroch, the FTSE-100 company's chief executive, said the results reflected "another excellent year for Sky" and that the takeover of its German and Italian operations - announced in 2014 - had enabled it to "leverage the many opportunities of scale".
"Our deep insights into the needs of customers, along with our investments in brilliant programmes and technology, strong relationships with our partners and, above all, our desire to embrace change means that we continue to better serve our customers, and grow our business," Mr Darroch added.
Sky acknowledged the impending hike in the cost of broadcasting Premier League football, with a £600m increase in the price of its rights packages to be reflected in its 2016-17 financial results.
However, the company said that its aim to grow revenues during the year by between 5% and 7%, along with a focus on efficient management of costs, would allow it "to substantially absorb the impact on profits (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) ".
