Sky?s pro forma gross results for the fourth quarter of 2002 show a positive performance for a year that has gone down in history as the worst ever experienced by the Brazilian pay-television industry. Sky Brazil closed the year with 731,500 subscribers, adding 28,000 in the last quarter. This was the first quarter for two years in which the subscriber base expanded. The company also says sales in the first fortnight of 2003 grew 10% year over year but haven?t caught up with 2001. It attributes the growth not to top management changes resulting from control by News Corp. but to a policy of churn containment with additional content from Globo and News Corp. It also says most of the add-ons are new subscribers rather than customers churning from competitors.
Last week Sky Brazil also released financial information on 2002. The numbers are old but even so provide a clearer picture of the business. According to the report, it invested 10 million US Dollars to swap out viewing cards for 700,000 set-tops. It sold 108,000 packages of Brazilian Championship soccer matches in the first nine months of the year and 134,000 in all four quarters. Net sales totaled 41.7m USD in the third quarter, for an operating profit of 3.6m USD. There was a non-operating loss of 168m USD, however, mainly due to currency translation loss in a period when the Brazilian Real fell sharply against the USD. In the first nine months, Sky Brazil lost 172m USD all told. Debt totaled 424.4m USD at September 30, half in long-term bonds and the rest relating to a satellite lease with PanAmSat. Short-term debt amounted to 17.5m USD. Cash in hand stood at 21m USD.
DBS
