Sky Deutschland is one of the first to produce its results for 2010, with its fourth quarter breaking all sorts of records in customers acquisition and retention. It has added 131,000 homes in the quarter compared to 39,000 this time last year, which compares exceptionally well with the full 2010 growth which was only 183,000.
Today it has some 2.65 million subs, mostly in Germany with about 10% in Austria.
Sky Deutschland had gross additions of 208,000 up from 167,000 last time and slashed its 12-month churn rate down to 16.2%, around 1.35% a month, and during the quarter this has gone down to 11.8%, under 1% per month. ARPU was up slightly at €30 from €29.45 in the immediate past quarter.
Over the year the success is once again down to the tried and tested News Corp formula of getting into HD services early and some 325,000 new HD subscribers have been signed during the year, against 268,000 last year bringing the total to 593,000 total HD subscribers
As a result of all this success Sky Deutschland has lowered its loss prediction to between €260 million and €270 million. The company said that it now plans to borrow up to €400 million in debt, guaranteed by News Corp and said that the outlook for 2011 will be significantly better than 2010, but will remain negative.
In January Sky Deutschland will launch it’s a new live sports format called ‘My stadium ‘ The Sky Bundesliga preview with a focused TV channel for many of the major soccer clubs.
Sky Deutschland has also said it will work with Samsung, TechniSat and Humax to distribute a new CI Plus module (Common Interface module like a US cableCard) and introductory offer prices for people with these devices because they don’t need a separate encrypted set top. In November Sky said that subscribers on Kabel Deutschland’s digital cable network can get Sky via KD’s CI Plus module.