Sky plc published unaudited results for the nine months ended March 31, 2015. Group revenues grew by 5% to £8,453 million (2014: £8,051 million).
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UK and Ireland revenues were up 6% to £5,824 million (2014: £5,490 million) and revenues in Germany were up 9% to £1,037 million (2014: £951 million). Revenues in Italy were resilient at £1,592 million (2014: £1,610 million) despite the challenging economic environment.
Subscription and transactional revenues grew by 5% and 19% respectively reflecting a record trading performance over the past twelve months. the company also delivered strong growth in both Advertising (+6%) and Wholesale (+4%) revenues as we continue to benefit from customer demand for its channels and programming.
Subscription revenues were up 5% to £7,280 million as we converted the healthy growth in customers (+947,000) and products (+4.6 million) over the past 12 months into ongoing revenues.
Germany delivered the strongest rate of growth, up 10%, whilst the largest absolute revenue growth came from the UK, driven by increases in the company's customer base and selling more products, with further benefit from our September price rise.
Subscription revenues in Italy were up £7 million as the company held its customer base flat year on year and increased HD penetration alongside a Multiscreen price rise.
Company's fastest rate of growth was in transactional revenues, up 19% to £120 million driven by the early success of Sky Store in the UK which included incremental revenues this year from its Buy & Keep service launched in April 2014.
Wholesale and syndication revenues were up 4% year on year to £406 million driven primarily by the strong performance in the UK due to rate increases under company's new Virgin Media and TalkTalk contracts, and excellent growth in Sky Vision following good international demand for Fortitude
and the acquisition of Love Productions.
Underlying wholesale revenues in Italy were broadly flat year on year (looking through the benefit in the prior year from Champions League resale
revenues) while wholesale revenues in Germany were marginally down, as a result of the successful migration of former Deutsche Telekom customers.
Group advertising revenues increased by 6% with Germany delivering very strong growth of 22% through higher sell-out rates and increased inventory around Bundesliga.
In the UK, advertising revenues were boosted by the continued strong performance of AdSmart alongside market growth from the pull forward of election marketing spend. Advertising revenues in Italy were up 5% due to the strong performance of company's free-to-air channel Cielo. ■