SKT Sky Network Television Limited.

[ados_nz]

I'd have to agree. At first the cage clips were entertaining to say the least. Now I feel like there's a saying.. something about grasping at straws.

Happily proven wrong.

Disc. Holding and accumulating

[Airw0lf]

SP didn't even move.

To be fair the extent of the Sky / Foxtel tie up is just exclusive rights to Crime + Investigation and The HISTORY Channel. That's hardly earth shattering.

[Ogg]

Why would anyone takeover a dinosaur. Easy entry in the future ie streaming TV. Why buy old technology.

"Buying technology"



Sky doesn't have any technology



Discovery bought TV3, an unprofitable company that's been bankrupt multiple times, because it understood the value of the assets it had.

Sky has a dominate market position in NZ and 927,000 paying customers.

Sky is worth $500m.

[mistaTea]

Interesting to note from the presentation that our direct Sky Box customers are now higher than they were at December 2018. They dipped to the lowest level at the June 2020 results and have grown substantially since.

This is in line with my anecdotes about seeing more and more satellite dishes in my fibre-only suburb area.

Streaming subs continue to grow, and from what they are saying the bulk of the new NEON subs are direct (not the discounted Spark offer).

ARPU for streaming dropped to $18/month due to Covid. In July I got an Annual Pass for Sky Sport NOW for $299 ($24.91/month). That was only possible due to the clawbacks Sky was able to negotiate, and the cheapest Annual Pass is now $399 ($33.25). As people roll off the super special and back onto normal pricing we will see an uplift again in ARPU.

And NEON is very cheap given the range of quality content and excellent user experience. It was a good idea to price it where it is to attract subs, but I expect to see some price lifts in the not too distant future. Nothing too drastic at first, but NEON could go from $13.95/month to $16.95/month or even $17.95/month over time and still be competitive relative to NETFLIX etc.

Not a huge stretch of the imagination to see streaming ARPU lift nearer to $30/month. That would generate ~$127M of revenue - and more if they can continue to increase subs at the same time.

Going to be very interesting to see how this plays our and what Management can do.

[Akane]

I deal with tech all day as my job, and the last thing I want is when I get home and things don't work and have to deal with more tech, wasting my time. Will happily pay a bit more for things that "just works", as you get older, you want to spend time on things that really matters, friends, family, or other ventures or hobbies, as the feeling of time is running against you grows.

And that is part of the reason why people are clinging on to "old tech", not because they don't know better, it's actually because they know better - they have the funds, just let it be, it's just money and it solves a (potential) problem.

[Benny1]

I deal with tech all day as my job, and the last thing I want is when I get home and things don't work and have to deal with more tech, wasting my time. Will happily pay a bit more for things that "just works", as you get older, you want to spend time on things that really matters, friends, family, or other ventures or hobbies, as the feeling of time is running against you grows.

And that is part of the reason why people are clinging on to "old tech", not because they don't know better, it's actually because they know better - they have the funds, just let it be, it's just money and it solves a (potential) problem.

Couldn't agree more...we know it just works!
I can't be arsed with some tech alternative that buffers halfway through a league game or whatever.

[mistaTea]

Couldn't agree more...we know it just works!
I can't be arsed with some tech alternative that buffers halfway through a league game or whatever.

The fact that sky box customer subs have GROWN despite dire predictions that the satellite base will continue to rapidly shrink to zero seems to support this sentiment.

[airedale]

It's exactly these kind of people that we hold captive on satellite

Value those loyal customers and look after those on satellite with their MySky boxes. They are worth their weight in gold.

[LaserEyeKiwi]

I think sky should consider having seperate management teams for its streaming business & its skybox business, and perhaps other areas as well.

That might sound unusual on the face of it, considering both products are delivering much of the same content, but countless times throughout many different industries have shown that the best way for a business suffering in a great industry change due to disruption is for the incumbent business (Sky Satellite TV business in this case) to create a seperate effort removed from the management influence of the old business model.

What this might look like in practice would be ring fencing the satellite box business with management of it focusing on extracting as much value as possible (cashflows) while it continues to shrink to its terminal state (there will probably be a couple hundred thousand subscribers that will keep it until they die).

On the other side, the management of the rest of Skys assets: Streaming (both local & international), content production, and soon broadband, would be laser focused on growth and optimisation of efforts for new platforms & markets, without any fear of cannibalising the satellite business.

That isn't to say that Sky couldn't bundle new streaming services and products like broadband with satellite subscriptions etc - in fact they would be stupid not too - but it would mean new products are not hamstrung by fears of them being "too good" that they would attract satellite subscribers and lower the ARPU.

In the end Sky should want to be the one cannibalising its own customers to lower cost products - rather than have people go to competitors instead.

To be fair to sky, their streaming products are quite good already: NEON at $15 a month has essentially the same content that skybox subscribers have to get movies & soho for at much higher cost and you can watch NEON easily on any device, and SkySportNow is similarly a bargain vs skybox which requires you to have a starter package and decoder as well. But to endure those products continue to excel, and new streaming products are developed (there are more opportunities other than what NEON & Sport currently cover), then management can't have any handbrakes applied to protect the skybox userbase (which is where management says is its immediate focus)

[Tripp]

Like i have always said, most people are lazy, they just want to sit down and press a button and have the device work. This is why decoders are still up there, even I (a person that works in IT) get pee'd off when chrome cast isn't working, or my android TV drops wifi and needs me to pull the power cable out etc.
It's the same for people that want to watch TV shows / movies, if you give them a way to watch it at a fair price then they won't go and torrent tv shows / movies etc.