Sky results show customer loss

SKY Network Television continues to lose subscribers as competition for paying customers intensifies.

Chief executive John Fellet acknowledged the customer churn when releasing the company’s financial results yesterday.

In December, the company reported the loss of 46,000 customers for the first six months of the financial year.

In the six months ended June, the churn ‘‘improved’’ with the loss of only 11,049, he said.

‘‘While it is too early to assess the full impact, the pricing and packaging changes in March 2018 have contributed to this improvement.’’

At balance date, Sky had 768,000 customers.

Mr Fellet focused on the company’s underlying profit when pre senting the financial results. The underlying profit rose 2.6% to $119.3 million after the company paid less tax and interest.

However, reviewing the statements showed revenue falling 6% in the year to $839.7 million, the operating profit fell 2.2% to $285.8 million, and earnings before interest and tax fell 2% to $183.4 million.

Once $360 million of goodwill impairments were added in, SkyTV made a reported loss of $240.7 million. Goodwill was now held on the books at $1.07 billion.

Mr Fellet said the company had reduced its costs by $47 million in the year and also retired $69 million of bank debt, along with paying $49 million of tax.

A fully taxpaid final dividend of 7.5c per share took the total dividend to 15cps for the year, down from 27.5cps in 2017.