BSkyB’s Sky Europe project has added a new layer of interest in results of its Continental sister platforms. Sky Italia is almost profitable but with meagre growth prospects, while Sky Deutschland is loss-making but with significant expansion potential

In Germany Sky’s underlying subscriber growth trend is improving while churn is at a historical low. But ARPU growth has stalled, leading us to expect slower revenue growth in fiscal 2015. The latter would be consistent with Sky’s guidance for subscribers and EBITDA

Despite a double dip recession and erosion of its subscriber base, Sky Italia has improved profitability in fiscal 2014. Lower churn points to a possible return to growth – if the economy stabilises

Virgin Media’s consumer cable business has moved back to accelerating volume and (underlying) ARPU growth, with the new ‘big bundle’ packages looking like a success

Growth at the business and mobile divisions improved sharply, pushing group revenue growth back into firmly positive territory, and profitability growth even higher

Given the broadband speeds it offers, Virgin Media is still good value, and gets better value as speed demands increase, allowing continued price increases to back up future growth

Netflix has always been highly secretive and released very few details about its international streaming performance in individual countries beyond the general statement that it is seeing encouraging progress everywhere

Now at last we can assess Netflix growth trends in the UK with a high degree of confidence as a result of a question added to the BARB ES questionnaire at the beginning of 2014, which is administered to large quarterly samples of 13,500 respondents

On the basis of BARB ES results for Q1 2014, we have revised our UK growth estimates upwards, believing Netflix paid for subscriptions to be above the 3 million mark as it heads into central Europe. Also most striking is Netflix’s popularity among younger households – clearly the cool thing to have

ITV has enjoyed another very positive start to the year, with a repeat 11% increase in adjusted EBITA, this time mainly due to strong NAR growth, further helped by a 20% increase in Online, Pay & Interactive revenues

Broadly flat ITV Studios revenues reflected timing and special factors, including negative changes in the exchange rate. Now the leading US independent producer of unscripted programmes after three further acquisitions, ITV has set its sights on growing scale in scripted content

Promising new opportunities at home and abroad look to be opening up for the ITV broadcast/online business through the expansion of ITV Studios. Nor has this gone unnoticed at a time of growing consolidation in the age of convergence, as indicated by Liberty Global’s acquisition of Sky’s 6.4% stake in ITV

BT had a solid Q1, with Group revenue growth still positive but slightly slowed by weakness in managed services and Global Services, and EBITDA flat in the last quarter before BT Sport costs fully annualise out

The consumer side had strong revenue growth, with accelerating volume growth and solid ARPU, although net subscriber additions were relatively subdued in a quarter that was seasonally quiet

The next quarter will likely be a noisier one, with promotions ramping up as the new football season launches, and both BT and Sky positioning themselves ahead of the next Premier League auction

The UK population is ageing, with over-40s in the majority for the first time in 2014/15. Since 2002, Baby boomers (young in the 1960s) and Gen X (1970s) have increased their shares of the UK’s wealth, disposable income and consumer expenditure.

Baby boomers and Gen X remain very firmly engaged with traditional media alongside the internet – older demographics are much more multimedia than younger demographics, who are disengaged with traditional media to the benefit of digital media.

Baby boomers and Gen X are engaged consumers, inclined to switch brands and adopt technology, and brands that optimise exposure to them through traditional media will gain share.

In second of a two part report examining the current state of the UK consumer magazines sector we focus on magazine brands’ prospects in the rapidly evolving digital and mobile landscape.

Mobile presents a particularly fundamental challenge to magazines, but should also act as a spur for publisher innovation; we assess the degree of digital engagement from publishers thus far and consider the risks in ecommerce and opportunities in video.

We look in detail at Good Housekeeping’s digital transformation strategy to be rolled out in the second half of 2014, which combines digital utility solutions with bold innovations in its heritage brand. More publisher experimentation is a pressing necessity; the industry appears to have stalled on digital innovation and new competitors such as Houzz and Wiggle are occupying the digital ground in traditional magazine territory.

In the first of a two part report examining the current state of the UK consumer magazines sector we focus on the performance of print as paid circulation decline accelerated, down 10% year-on-year in 2013.

We consider the display advertising performance of both consumer and B2B magazines across print and digital and provide forecasts through to 2017. While print display advertising decline in consumer magazines accelerated to 8% in 2013, digital growth was 12%, and digital advertising is now 15% of total display revenues.

The market is increasingly diverging between rapidly declining titles and differentiated (often high value) titles with older readerships where circulation falls have been less severe. We expect this gap to continue to widen as an improving economy provides some respite for stronger titles over the next two years.

EE reported impressive operating figures, with 4G net adds accelerating sharply from an already impressive base and mobile contract net adds leading the UK market

Service revenue growth was respectable, but did not improve on the previous quarter despite the surge in premium 4G customers, although profitability did continue to improve as further synergies were realised

EE will maintain a 4G coverage lead over the other operators into 2015, and the base is likely to continue to migrate to 4G in large numbers, but it remains to be seen if it can convert this into improvements on the top line

2014 saw a fall in profits as BSkyB absorbed the £217 million step-up in the annual cost of PL rights and invested £60-70 million in accelerating growth in its connected offerings, but with strong underlying revenue growth pointing to a resurgence of profits in 2015

The annual results release was over-shadowed by the news of BSkyB’s proposal to create Sky Europe through the acquisition of 21C’s shares in Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia, where it sees great opportunities for revenue growth and cost synergies

Taking on a large increase in debt to finance the acquisitions when the next PL auction is about to strike sends out the message that BSkyB management is confident about the state of its business, has a clear view about the value of PL rights, and will not be side-tracked from the pursuit of its broader strategic objectives