The DirecTV satellite television business unit’s parent company, DirecTV Group [DTV], boosted its revenues 22 percent to $2.51 billion during first-quarter 2004, compared with the same quarter a year ago.

The DirecTV Group’s revenues rose primarily due to an increase in the number of subscribers and ARPU (average revenue per user) at the U.S. satellite TV subsidiary as well as from higher sales of DirecTV set-top boxes and DirecWay satellite broadband services at Hughes Network Systems (HNS). Operating profit before depreciation and amortization of $96 million and an overall operating loss of $91 million both marked improvement from the same quarter the year.

The highlight of first-quarter 2004 was the accelerating subscriber growth at the DirecTV satellite television unit, which added a record 912,000 subscribers, said Chase Carey, the parent company’s president and CEO. In addition, combining a 30-percent increase in gross subscribers, coupled with a four-year low average monthly churn rate of 1.4 percent, resulted in an all-time high of 460,000 net new subscribers in the first quarter. Those net new subscriber gains rose 67 percent from the same period last year.