Undeterred by the gloom in economy, satellite broadcaster, BSkyB, recorded 25% increase in profits, much higher than expected in the first quarter.

BSkyB also succeeded in attracting 87,000 new customers taking it past 9 million milestone.

The broadcaster’s chief executive, Jeremy Darroch described its performance of first quarter as best in terms of number of customers in five years, which now stands at 9.067 million.

Darroch informed that some of Sky’s users had traded down from more expensive packages, but it has been offset by persuading customers to avail one of its 3 services, TV, home telephony and broadband. Currently only 12% of subscribers had signed up for all three services.

Darroch declared that broadcaster was relatively well positioned as a business but was not complacent and added that no consumer business could be immune to sustained downturn.

Darroch had taken over from James Murdoch less than a year ago.

He claimed that more people were joining Sky, staying for long and availing more of its services thereby contributing to growth of its top line.

In three months till September end, Sky’s operating profits rose by 25% to £179m and revenues grew 5% to £1.25bn. Darroch informed that company was well on track to achieve target of 10 million customers by the end of decade.