Sky Perfect Communications Inc. said Wednesday its consolidated revenue soared 18.4 percent to a record 70.37 billion yen in fiscal 2002.

The firm attributed the rise to an increase in subscribers triggered by the World Cup soccer finals.

But the operator of the Sky PerfecTV digital satellite broadcast service reported an operating loss of 18.31 billion yen, having written off the costs of obtaining the exclusive Japanese rights to broadcast the event, which ran from May 31 to June 30.

The company reported an operating loss of 10.34 billion yen in fiscal 2001.

The broadcaster's earnings were also squeezed by facility investment and other production costs tied to the World Cup finals. Group net losses swelled to 18.89 billion yen from 12.25 billion yen.

Group pretax losses rose to 19.03 billion yen from 11.90 billion yen, the company said.

Sky Perfect Communications said it logged a record monthly growth in subscribers in May 2002.

Sky Perfect Communications said the number of new subscribers increased 157 percent from a year earlier to 118,000, with the net increase in new subscribers standing at 384,000 for the reporting year.

This brought the total number of subscribers to 3.43 million.

The company said it will skip dividends for the reporting year, mirroring the preceding year.

For fiscal 2003, the company expects to generate a group net profit of 3 billion yen on revenue of 75 billion yen.