Latest News
[Satellite TODAY 05-07-13] Sky Deutschland now has reached more than 3.4 million customers in Germany and Austria. This was one of the highlights of its first quarter results issued late last week. The company also reported more than 1.6 million HD subscribers, up another 100,000 compared to the same stage last year. The operator also saw a nice spike in overall revenues, reporting 364.4 million euros ($477.45 million) in the first quarter, a 14 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Such is the strong performance of the company that Sarah Simon, a media equity analyst at Berenberg, said in a research note that News Corp should look to take control of the company sooner rather than later.
“We believe that Sky Deutschland represents the best media growth story in Europe, with a steadily declining risk profile. Indeed, with a fully funded business model, football rights secured until 2017, strong momentum in customer growth and ARPU, and a partnership approach to other platforms, we believe it merits a potentially lower cost of capital than BSkyB. We see the share price continuing to appreciate, and would advice News Corporation to take full control before the market appropriately prices this unique opportunity,” Simon said.
The operator showcased some strong metrics all around. Its ARPU figure amongst its subscriber base reached 33.15 euros ($43.44), a small increase compared to the same stage last year. Also, Sky Deutschland’s OTT-type product, Sky Go, saw a total of 15.2 million customer sessions during the first quarter this year, a significant increase of more than 3.2 million compared to the previous quarter.
In an interview last year, Brian Sullivan, Sky Deutschland’s CEO admitted that the OTT platform was a key part of the operator’s strategy. “We have, in fact, very quietly become the largest OTT pay-platform in Germany. We developed our ‘Sky Go’ service a few years ago, and have been giving it away as part of our improvement of the service to our HD customers. The take-up of Sky Go has been fantastic,” he said.
Sky Deutschland has rapidly turned into one of the main satellite pay-TV success stories in Europe, and a key acquirer of satellite capacity. The operator is also likely to be an early mover in terms of offering ultra-HD services. In a recent interview, Stephan Heimbecher, head of Innovations & Standards, Sky Deutschland admitted the company is confident in ultra-HD’s success.
“We are convinced that ultra-HD will be a big hit with customers in the long term. We have seen Sky’s HD offer explode from three to more than sixty HD channels within three years, and we keep on adding HD channels on a regular basis as demand from subscribers is very high. This gives us a lot of motivation to look into the next evolutionary step: ultra-HD. However, for many different reasons, we can’t predict when this will become a commercial reality. So while first ultra-HD panels hit the market, they are not really affordable for the masses yet and it will also take a bit longer for compelling ultra-HD content and especially live sport production to become available,” Heimbecher said.
Get the latest Via Satellite news!
Subscribe Now