UK pay-TV company BSkyB said yesterday its full-year pretax profit climbed one per cent to £798 million, in line with expectations, as it added 77,000 customers in the fourth quarter.

The company, 38 per cent owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp , now has 8.18 million subscribers to its market-leading pay-TV service, up about 4.8 per cent from the previous year.

Subscriber growth was above analysts' consensus estimate and the company's own guidance, both of around 60,000, Exane BNP analyst Philip Guest said in a research note.

Revenue for the year ended June 30 climbed eight per cent to £4.1 billion.

Analysts expected pretax profit of £798 million and revenues of £4.2 billion, according to the median estimate of 18 analysts polled by Reuters.

The company's fourth-quarter annualised revenue per subscriber (ARPU) was £388, down four pounds from the previous quarter.

Quarterly churn, or the percentage of customers who dropped their subscription, was 10.6 per cent, flat with a year earlier and down from 11.4 per cent in the third quarter.

BSkyB, which has launched a broadband service after its acquisition of internet service provider Easynet, said Easynet produced an operating loss of £11 million. The first phase of investment in broadband was £12 million.

"We continue to recommend that clients buy the stock while Sky uses cheap telecoms, powered by local-loop unbundling, as a marketing tool to drive pay-television growth," Mr Guest said.

The company plans to invest about one-sixth of its operating profit over the next two years in broadband.

It raised its final dividend 34 per cent to 6.7 pence per share.