Tough times continue for Sky Deutschland

German pay-TV operator Sky Deutschland (formerly Premiere) lost 7,000 subscribers during the second quarter of the year and reported losses of over €360m.

Sky had a total of 2.364 million direct subscribers at the end of June, compared with 2.371 million at the end of March. While the operator attracted 23,000 monthly contract customers, it lost 30,000 Flex subscribers during that time.

The operator reported a net loss of €365.8m, most of which was down to writing off the Premiere trademark to the tune of €253.9m. Revenues for the second quarter were down €230.6m from €252.1m while EBIDTA was negative €63.4m compared with positive €11.6m a year earlier. There was better news in terms of ARPU, which increased to €25.20 during the quarter from €24.85 the previous quarter and €23.89 a year earlier.

CEO Mark Williams remains positive: “We are very pleased with progress since the successful launch of Sky on 4 July, with awareness of the Sky brand very quickly exceeding 50%. In these first few weeks, we have seen a very positive reaction from both our existing customers upgrading to the new expanded range of Sky services, including our new comprehensive HD offer, as well as a strong increase in the rate of subscriber additions.”