Sky Deutschland has “broken through”
November 13, 2012
By Chris Forrester
Later this week, CEO Brian Sullivan will unveil Sky Deutschland’s Q3 numbers. Investment banker Morgan Stanley is optimistic that the News Corp-backed broadcaster will again be EBITDA positive. The bank’s latest note to investors states that it believes pay-TV in Germany has “broken through”.
It is anticipating net additions for Q3 of 80,000 subscriptions (a little lower than last year’s 98,000), and not helped this year by the Bundesliga starting its games three weeks later than normal (August 24th as opposed to August 5th) which means the build up of subscriber growth has been slower than in Q3/2011. Morgan Stanley is anticipating churn of about 11.3 per cent.
The bank’s note says that Sky Deutschland’s recent comments have been “perhaps” a little more cautious, and guiding towards net growth for the full year to be in the 380,000 net new subs, despite some market chatter that talks of 400,000.