Business

Sky shares still good buy despite rises - analyst

23:39 pm on 7 October 2013

An analyst says despite their 25% gains since late June, shares in Sky Network Television still offer good value.

On Friday, Sky shares rose 12 cents after the phone company, Vodafone, unveiled New Zealand's first full TV service using the new ultra fast broadband network in which Sky is a partner.

Forsyth Barr head of wealth research, Rob Mercer, says investors are looking for stocks which offer both growth and yield and the pay television operator's shares fit the bill.

"It's obviously had a good recovery now since the selldown of Newscorp followed by the noise around the EPL contract that they lost but now the reality is that they are paying a cash yield based on the dividend they paid last year of around 8% and we still see ongoing good growth, solid growth, over the next few years.

"These people focus on being a pay TV company. At the end of the day it's a content company and there's still 50% of households don't pay direct for content.

"...the way forward is going to be more and more contribution from households to get a wider availability content and we'll see that over the next six months as Sky brings in its online product via the MY SKY and expands content over its iSKY product."