Advanced Television

Sky Deutschland narrows loss after relaunch

February 26, 2010

In the first six months since the launch of its new TV entertainment service in July 2009, Sky Deutschland attracted 369,000 new customers to its service, up 26 per cent compared to the second half of 2008. Net subscriber growth was 105,000 taking the total number of direct subscribers to 2.47 million on 31st December 2009. Awareness of the Sky brand exceeded 70 per cent at the end of 2009.

For full year 2009, Sky achieved approximately 597,000 gross additions – an increase of 37 per cent compared to full year 2008. Total revenues decreased to E902.1 million (2008: E941.1 million). The absence of one-time licence revenues included in 2008, and declining advertising revenues due to the overall weak economic climate, were mainly responsible for the lower level of revenues in 2009. Operating expenses totalled E1.164.8 billion (2008: E998.1 million) and went up mainly due to increases in programming costs.

EBITDA for full year 2009 was negative E262.7 million. Result for the period was negative E676.5 million. Following the decision to launch the new service under the Sky brand, the Premiere trademark was written off in Q2 2009 which had a negative net effect of E253.9 million.

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