Pre-tax profits at British satellite broadcaster BSkyB more than doubled to £514m in the year to the end of June.
Revenues climbed 15% to £3.66 billion. The company added 81,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of 7.4 million. It needs an average of 100,000 per quarter to reach its stated goal of eight million subscribers by the end of 2005.
The company said growth was affected by the amount of high-profile sporting events - such as Euro 2004 and Wimbledon - screened on BBC and ITV in the period. Subscriber numbers in Ireland grew by 5,000 on the previous quarter to 323,000.
Nearly a year after James Murdoch, son of News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch, took the reins at Europe's most profitable satellite broadcaster, investors were eager for him to define plans for maintaining profit and subscriber growth.
Murdoch set out a strategy of continued subscriber growth, targeting 10 million in 2010, with 30% of subscribers having more than one Sky set-top box and 25% having a Sky+ digital video recorder.
To find and convince new subscribers, Sky will boost its marketing budget by up to 50% next year. It warned that the cost of acquiring new subscribers would increase 'marginally in the short term and by around 10% in the medium term'.
Sky is the dominant digital TV provider but its lead has been challenged by Freeview, the free-to-air service championed by the BBC which has quickly gained about 3.5 million subscribers. BSkyB is a partial owner of the service.
