News Corp-backed Sky Deutschland will unveil its full-year results on February 28th, and investment banker Morgan Stanley, in a note to clients, suggests there will be few surprises in the numbers.

The bank expects Sky Deutschland to confirm gross subscriber additions of 260,000 in Q4, although churn for the quarter rose from 12.4 per cent to 13.3 per cent which will likely translate into an annualised rate of 11.8 per cent. This will be the second quarter of rising churn (Q3 was 13.7 per cent), although the broadcaster says the price rises in early October (of €1 a month for premium packages) have impacted churn, and a second factor was the burst in subscribers a year earlier.

Net subscriber growth for the pre-Christmas quarter will be 151,000 (155,000 a year ago), which will mean the broadcaster finished the year with 3.363 million subs.

HDTV subscribers are also up, about 177,000, taking the total HD subs to 1.51 million and up 540,000 during the year (45 per cent penetration). Annualised ARPU is expected to be €33.88 a month (€30.46 in 2011).

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