Dish Tops Profit Expectations Despite Pay-TV Subscriber Losses
November 09 2015 - 7:09AM
Dow Jones News
By Ezequiel Minaya
Dish Network Corp. said Monday that its pay-TV subscriber losses
accelerated in the third quarter, although its profit topped Wall
Street expectations.
Dish said it lost 23,000 net pay-TV subscribers in the quarter,
compared with a loss of 12,000 a year earlier.
In the prior quarter of this year, Dish shed about 81,000 net
pay-TV subscribers.
For the past few quarters, Dish has suffered from its
programming contract disputes with Time Warner Inc.'s Turner
networks and 21st Century Fox's Fox News. Meanwhile, the company
has focused on acquiring high-quality video customers with better
credit scores, who are willing to pay more for better products and
are less likely to disconnect.
Still, in the wider industry, the rush of cord-cutting seen in
the second quarter seemed to slow in the latest three-month
period.
Aside from Dish, with about 70% of pay-TV customers accounted
for, the industry has lost only about 67,000 subscribers on a net
basis. That compares with a net loss of nearly 400,000 for those
same companies and roughly 566,000 for the industry in the second
quarter, according to MoffettNathanson.
At the end of the third quarter, Dish's pay-TV service had
13.909 million subscribers, down about 1% from 14.041 million a
year earlier. Average monthly revenue per subscriber rose to $86.33
from $84.39 a year earlier. Its churn rate, or the rate at which
subscribers canceled service, grew to 1.86% from 1.67% a year
ago.
Overall, the company posted a profit of $196 million, or 42
cents a share, up from $146 million or 31 cents a share a year
earlier.
Revenue inched up 1.4% to $3.73 billion.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast per-share earnings
at 39 cents a share on revenue of $3.79 billion.
Write to Ezequiel Minaya at ezequiel.minaya@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 09, 2015 06:54 ET (11:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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