Sky Italia closed the six months to 31 December 2016 with revenues of €1,434 billion (£1,236 billion) up 9% year-on-year and 4% on a like-for-like basis, i.e. excluding one-off revenues from TV rights resale of the Rio Olympics. The operating profits up £41m to £70m (+141%). A positive contribution came in particular from advertising revenue, up 14% year-over-year in the quarter.
“In a challenging context – comments Sky – we have expanded our customer base in Italy for five consecutive quarters and operating profits for the first half of the year have reached the highest level in five years”. This "excellent financial performance – reads the note from Sky – was driven by a total growth in customers of 67". The retail subscribers as at 31 December are 4,809 million (there were 4,742 million in June) with an average monthly expense per customer of 42 euros, in line with June. Customer satisfaction improved, reaching an all-time high in December and the customer abandonment rate dropped to 9,5%, it was 9,9% in the first half of 2015-16.
The company announced a few days ago 200 redundancies and 300 transfers from Rome to Milan to which the journalists of the SkyTg24 masthead reacted with a day of strike on Wednesday
