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Comcast and CBS Post Strong Results, Aided by Web

July 31, 2013 by

Comcast reported that its earnings rose to $1.7 billion from $1.35 billion, or to 65 cents a share from 50 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. The results surpassed analysts’ already sunny earnings projections of 63 cents a share.

Comcast’s strong quarter was spurred by its broadband Internet business and by a rebound, albeit a tepid one, of the NBC broadcast network. This was the first quarter in which Comcast owned 100 percent of NBCUniversal, the network’s corporate parent; it had previously held a 51 percent stake.

The earnings release was celebrated by Wall Street on Wednesday morning, sending Comcast’s stock up more than 5 percent. It closed at $45.08, almost achieving a record high.

After the closing bell, Comcast was joined by the CBS Corporation, the owner of the CBS broadcast network, which reported its highest quarterly profits ever. Earnings there rose to $472 million, or 76 cents a share, from $427 million, or 65 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

“Double-digit revenue growth — and the best quarterly profits we’ve ever had — add up to a phenomenal quarter for CBS,” the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, said in a statement. On a Wednesday afternoon conference call, the company’s executive chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, who comes up with new ways to praise Mr. Moonves to investors seemingly every quarter, used the term “supergenius.”

CBS’s performance was attributed in part to content licensing deals with online streaming services like Amazon, which has been running repeats of the network’s newest program “Under the Dome” this summer. The company, which has historically depended more on advertising revenue than its peers have, said it had a 22 percent increase in revenue from content licensing and distribution; Mr. Moonves’s statement mentioned that “our non-advertising revenue sources are having a bigger impact on our results all the time.”

The healthy results from both companies may augur more good news when other networks report in the weeks to come.

At Comcast, revenue for the NBCUniversal division — which includes the NBC network, a wide array of cable channels, a movie studio and other assets — was up 8.9 percent year-over-year, to almost $6 billion. Michael McCormack, a media analyst for Nomura, said in a note to investors that NBCUniversal’s performance exceeded expectations, “with filmed entertainment and broadcast television revenue offsetting weaker-than-expected theme parks revenue.”

NBC’s cable channels, including USA, Syfy and Bravo, posted a 7.7 percent increase in revenue, to $2.41 billion in the quarter. Its somewhat smaller broadcast business, which has been undergoing a reorganization, had a 11.6 percent increase, to $1.73 billion. Mr. McCormack attributed the broadcast unit’s gains to “better ratings and higher retransmission consent fees.”

Comcast executives specifically credited “The Voice,” the singing competition on NBC that has given the network some much-needed momentum.

Distribution, not content, remains the biggest part of Comcast’s business. Revenue for the distribution business, called Comcast Cable, was up 5.8 percent year-over-year, to about $10.5 billion, partly because it added 187,000 broadband subscribers in the second quarter.

Comcast has been losing television subscribers to DirecTV and Verizon FiOS for years, and it lost another 159,000 in the second quarter. But the rate of loss has slowed lately, a point the company emphasized again on Wednesday. The company squeezed a 2.7 percent revenue gain from its TV business, largely through rate increases and from subscribers who chose more expensive packages.

“Cable had outstanding growth, particularly in high-speed Internet, and NBCUniversal had strong performance across all of its businesses,” Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, said in a statement.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/business/media/2-media-companies-announce-big-gains-in-profit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Stocks Edge Lower in Early Trading

April 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Wall Street slipped lower Monday after the worst weekly decline of the year, as investors face the prospect of a lackluster corporate earnings season.

The Standard Poor’s 500-stock index was 0.2 percent lower, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.4 percent and the Nasdaq composite index was 0.1 percent lower in morning trading.

Earnings forecasts have been scaled back heading into first-quarter reports. Earnings from companies in the S.P. 500 are expected to have risen just 1.6 percent from a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data, down from a 4.3 percent forecast in January.

A weaker-than-expected jobs report on Friday prompted concern that the American economy is in a slow patch.

Despite those headwinds, the loose monetary policy from central banks around the world continues to attract investors to equities, said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

“It’s all about easy money, and it’s lifting equities around the globe at this time,” Mr. Cardillo said.

The Bank of Japan started its bond purchases after it announced last week that it would inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying program has been a significant catalyst of the recent rally that has sent major indexes to record levels.

Still, markets in the United States could see a technical correction of about 6 to 8 percent in the latter part of the month as the focus turns to corporate results, Mr. Cardillo said.

Alcoa’s earnings will be the first from a Dow component after Monday’s closing bell. JPMorgan Chase and Bed Bath Beyond are among the major companies set to announce results later in the week.

Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, will give a speech after markets close on Monday. Investors have been watching for any insight into the Fed’s thinking on how long the central bank will keep its asset purchase program in place as it tries to bolster the economic recovery.

General Electric said it will buy oil field services provider Lufkin Industries for about $3.3 billion, sending Lufkin shares up 38 percent in early trading. G.E. slipped 0.2 percent.

Investors will be keeping an eye on the latest developments out of the euro zone after a constitutional court in Portugal overturned key austerity measures in the government’s latest budget. Portugal’s prime minister said the government would cut spending to meet targets agreed with its lenders. European stock markets were ahead modestly in afternoon trading.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Stocks & Bonds: daily-stock-market-activity

December 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Stocks rose on Monday, although they lost some of their gains after a media report said Standard Poor’s was about to warn Germany and other euro zone nations that their credit ratings were being assessed for a possible downgrade.

The markets were generally higher earlier in the day when an agreement between leaders of France and Germany raised optimism that European leaders would reach a credible solution to their debt crisis.

S. P. confirmed after the closing bell that it might downgrade the credit ratings of 15 euro zone countries. S. P. placed the ratings of euro zone countries, including top-rated Germany and France, on credit watch negative. The euro last traded at $1.339, down 0.1 percent for the day, near a session low of $1.337.

“We know Europe is facing a dire situation here and this action seems appropriate,” said Brian Dolan, chief strategist at Forex.com in Bedminster, N.J. “If they are trying to send a message, now is a good time.”

The rating agency’s move came as the leaders of France and Germany agreed to a master plan for imposing budget discipline across the region ahead of a meeting on Friday.

The proposal from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany included automatic penalties for governments that fail to keep their deficits under control.

Wall Street ended off the day’s highs, though it was still near 1 percent higher.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 78.41 points, or 0.65 percent, to 12,097.83. The Standard Poor’s 500-stock index rose 12.80 points, or 1.03 percent, to 1,257.08. The Nasdaq climbed 28.83 points, or 1.10 percent, to 2,655.76.

European stocks hit a five-week closing high, though analysts were wary the optimism could prove overdone.

“We are far from an easy consensus that it’s a done deal,” said Marc Pado, United States market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in San Francisco. “But we are further along in the negotiations than we’ve been and we are focused on the right things now.”

While the American economy is still expected to avoid another recession, data released Monday was also downbeat.

Growth in the service sector in the United States eased last month, and new orders for factory goods fell in October, tempering recent optimism that the economy might be poised for a more vigorous rebound.

The Institute for Supply Management said Monday that its services index fell unexpectedly to 52.0 last month from 52.9 the month before, dragged lower by a decline in employment. Although that figure was at its weakest since January 2010, business activity and new orders both improved, showing the mixed nature of expansion that also was evident in the upbeat jobs report for November.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion.

“This is the first disappointing indicator we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks,” said Cary Leahey, managing director at Decision Economics in New York. “The economy has improved, it is still not growing very quickly.”

Pointing to growth in services, the I.S.M.’s gauge of new orders rose to 53.0 from 52.4.

In a separate report on Monday from the Commerce Department, new orders for factory goods fell in October for the second consecutive month, suggesting a possible softening in manufacturing. That area of the economy has been a crucial support for the recovery. The agency said that orders for manufactured goods decreased 0.4 percent.

Economists had forecast orders would fall 0.3 percent after a previously reported 0.3 percent increase in September.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e34698b77c217c55154ada0bc650968c

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,