Satellite pay-TV giant BSkyB said today it had added 77,000 customers in the three months between April and June, as it reported increases in full-year profits and revenues.
The figure exceeded analysts' forecasts and took the group's total number of subscribers in the UK and Ireland to nearly 8.2 million.
It was slightly down on the 83,000 additions recorded in the same quarter last year but represented the best quarterly figures of the year apart from the traditionally strong pre-Christmas period.
The BSkyB chief executive, James Murdoch, was also cheered by 123,000 new signings to Sky+, taking the personal video recorder service well past 1.5m households.
Nearly a fifth of Sky subscribers now have Sky+ while 13%, or just over 1 million, have Multiroom, Sky services in more than one room.
Sky said the addition of 389,000 customers in the past 12 months put it on track to meet its target of 10 million subscribers by the end of 2010.
BSkyB also said revenues in its financial year, which runs to the end of June, rose by 8% to £4.15bn, with pre-tax profits up 1% from a year earlier to £798m.
Churn - the proportion of customers who cancelled their Sky subscriptions - was 10.6% in the last quarter, the same as a year ago and down from 11.4% in the previous quarter.
Arpu, or annualised revenue per user, was £388 in the three-month period, down £4 from the previous quarter.
The company, which last week launched a broadband offering, said its recently acquired internet service provider Easynet had made an operating loss of £11m.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 7239 9857
· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
