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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: , ,

CBS Acquires 50% Stake In Former TV Guide Network

March 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The deal, in the works for several weeks, puts CBS into partnership with Lionsgate, which will retain the other half of the company. The management structure was not announced, but the official statement about the deal promised that a rebranding effort and a new programming strategy would be announced later.

CBS, which already owns the pay-cable channel Showtime, paid about $100 million to acquire the 50 percent of TVGN and of the Web site TVGuide.com that had been owned by One Equity Partners, a unit of JPMorgan Chase. The price means the value of the half-stake has declined since 2009, when One Equity paid $122 million for a 49 percent share.

Lionsgate, the entertainment company responsible for such television shows as “Mad Men” and “Nurse Jackie,” bought the network in 2000 for $241 million. TVGN is available in more than 80 million homes.

CBS’s top executive, Leslie Moonves, has been looking to expand in the basic cable arena for some time, but only at the right price, he has said. (CBS also owns a sports network and the Smithsonian Channel on basic cable.)

In January, the company announced its intention to divest itself of its outdoor advertising unit, a move that was viewed as consistent with Mr. Moonves’s frequent statements that he intended to build CBS as a pure “content company.” Adding a basic cable channel will offer both a potential outlet for new original programming and for the large library of CBS programming.

Mr. Moonves and Jon Feltheimer, the chief executive of Lionsgate, are longtime close personal friends.

TVGN, which is a separate entity from TV Guide magazine, began in 1981 as an on-screen program guide. It later began acquiring repeat episodes of network series and added some original programming. But early on those shows had to share the screen with program listings.

Now, in a large majority of the homes that receive the channel, the screen is not split between programming and a channel guide, though some of its remaining deals with cable systems require the channel to display a running list of shows and channels.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/business/media/cbs-acquires-stake-in-tvgn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder Blog: CBS Profit and Revenue Increase on Higher Licensing Fees

November 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The CBS Corporation said on Wednesday that its revenue and earnings increased in the third quarter, reflecting sturdy growth in licensing fees for television shows and subscription fees for stations that more than offset a slight drop in advertising revenue.

CBS’s total revenue was $3.42 billion, up from $3.37 billion in the same quarter last year. Its net income rose 16 percent, to $391 million from $338 million last year. Its earnings per share were 60 cents, compared with 50 cents a share last year.

Excluding a one-time adjustment, the company earned $426 million, or 65 cents a share.

Leslie Moonves, CBS’s chief executive, attributed the results to a continuing “transformation” of the company into one that relies less on advertising revenue and more on distribution revenue than it used to.

The most recent example of a new distribution deal came on Monday, when the company made a multiyear deal with Hulu to stream episodes of old TV shows like “I Love Lucy” on the Web site.

Mr. Moonves, who signed a contract extension last month, said on a conference call with investors Wednesday afternoon that CBS was considering, for the first time, “opportunities to license past seasons of current CBS and Showtime programming.” Such deals could let viewers catch up on “The Good Wife” or “Homeland” through services like Hulu or Netflix.

Advertising still accounts for more than half of CBS’s revenue. In a few months, the network will televise the year’s biggest advertising event, the Super Bowl. Mr. Moonves said Wednesday that some 30-second commercial spots during the game had sold for more than $4 million.

But advertising revenue dipped 3 percent companywide in the third quarter, dragged down by weakness at CBS Radio and six nights of pre-empted prime-time shows during the national political conventions. The company’s chief financial officer, Joseph Ianniello, said some political ad buys were shifted to the fourth quarter from the third, which ended in September, “as campaigns chose to spend their dollars closer to the election.”

Despite the advertising headwinds, the segment of CBS that includes its broadcast network and its studio posted a 3 percent gain in revenue, in part because of increases in retransmission fees and television license fees. Revenue in the segment that includes its local stations increased 1 percent, with gains at its television stations offset by losses at its radio stations.

Acknowledging a continued drift away from live viewing of prime-time TV shows, Mr. Moonves said CBS would “make it a priority” to get paid by advertisers for all viewing. Ad rates are currently set based on the viewing of commercials within three days of their air date, a standard known as C3, but Mr. Moonves said CBS wanted to be paid for viewing “beyond C3.”

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/profit-rises-16-at-cbs-on-higher-licensing-fees/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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