Dish Says Rising Content Costs Contributed To Q4 Earnings Miss
Hard to say how investors will read the results: There are a lot of moving parts at Dish as it teases its wireless broadband plans, promotes its Hopper DVRs, and shutters Blockbuster stores — all while it manages its core satellite TV services business. But Q4 ended up with $209.1M in net income attributable to Dish, -33.1% vs the period last year, on revenues of $3.59B, -1.1%. The revenue figure is slightly better than the $3.56B that analysts expected. Earnings, at 46 cents a share, missed forecasts for 50 cents. The company’s press release and annual report this morning mostly discuss full year results, not the quarter. Dish says, though, that earnings were hurt by rising programming costs — which execs frequently decry — as well one-time items related to its many courtroom battles. It ended the year with 14.056M subscribers, an increase of 14,000 in the quarter, which is slightly better than some analysts expected. Dish says it had 800 Blockbuster stores at the end of 2012, and recently said it will close about 300. The operation had an operating loss of $35.3M last year on revenues of $1.09B. “In addition to the landmark introductions of our Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR, the successful launch of dishNET and the developments with our wireless spectrum, one of our key stories of the year was the change in our customer trajectory,” CEO Joeseph Clayton says. “During 2012, Dish added about 89,000 net pay-TV subscribers after having lost approximately 166,000 net pay-TV subscribers in 2011.”
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