British pay-TV giant BSkyB said yesterday that group net profit jumped 19 per cent to £689 million (€845 million) in the first nine months of its fiscal year on higher subscriber revenues.

Sales revenue jumped five per cent to £5.078 billion in the nine months to March 31 compared with the corresponding period in 2010/11, BSkyB added in an earnings statement.

The group meanwhile gained a net 78,000 subscribers in the three months to March 31, giving it a total of 10.55 million customers.

“We have made a good start to 2012,” BSkyB chief executive Jeremy Darroch said in a statement.

“In what remains a tough economic environment, strong and consistent execution of our plan has delivered good growth across our product range.

“We have grown revenues by five per cent while holding prices flat for customers and delivered a record nine-month operating profit of £908 million alongside 24 per cent growth in earnings per share,” he added.

BSkyB is moving on from a failed takeover bid by its biggest shareholder News Corp. last year.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation abandoned its bid to win full control of BSkyB in the wake of a phone-hacking scandal that forced it to shut British tabloid newspaper News of the World.

News Corp. had bid £7.8 billion for the 60.9 per cent of BSkyB it did not already own. BSkyB had rejected the 700-pence-per-share offer even before the bid collapsed.

BSkyB broadcasts the 24-hour Sky News channel, English Premier League football and blockbuster movies and also provides Internet and telephone services.

BSkyB shares jumped 2.08 per cent to 705.37 pence in early trading on London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index, which was down 0.31 per cent at 5,793.99 points.