NZ's Sky Network TV full yr profit down 9.6 pct
WELLINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - New Zealand pay television company Sky Network TV Ltd (SKT.NZ) reported a 9.6 percent fall in full year profit on Friday, as higher costs offset growth in revenue and subscribers.
The top-10 company, which has a near monopoly in pay television services in New Zealand, said net profit after tax for the year ended June 30 was NZ$88.4 million ($60.1 million) compared with NZ$97.7 million a year ago.
A Reuters Estimates survey of six analysts had a median forecast of a net profit of NZ$91.4 million.
Sky declared an unchanged dividend of 7 cents per share.
Shares in Sky, around 44 percent controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. NWS.N, closed on Thursday at NZ$4.63. It has gained 23.5 percent so far this year, compared with a rise of around 12.5 percent in the benchmark NZX-50 index .NZ50.
Costs increased during the year as it rolled out its new high-definition service, which Sky has previously said would cost NZ$22 million across the 2009 and 2010 financial years.
Sky said it had 85,000 subscribers for its high definition personal video recorders.
Sky, which is now in 47 percent of New Zealand homes, offers more than 80 TV and radio channels from the Cartoon Network to the Playboy Channel, and also operates free-to-air channel Prime Television.
It competes against state-owned Television New Zealand's (TVNZ) two channels, and the privately owned TV3 and C4 networks, all of whom this year combined to launch a free-to-air digital platform. ($1=NZ$1.47) (Reporting by Adrian Bathgate)
