Time Warner Cable posts profit, initiates dividend, but customers cut back on premium channels

Time Warner Cable posts profit but outlook low

Time Warner Cable Inc. reported a profit for the fourth quarter Thursday but the economy was still weighing on its customers, who cut back on their subscriptions of premium movie channels and ordered fewer videos on demand.

The nation’s second-largest cable TV provider also said it will start paying a quarterly dividend of 40 cents per share. That makes Time Warner Cable the third major cable TV company to do so, after Comcast Corp. and Cablevision Systems Corp. Cable operators typically plow cash back into their operations but have been under pressure from investors to provide a better return.

Investors liked the payoff. Shares of Time Warner Cable rose $1.31, or 3 percent, to $44.93 in afternoon trading.

Even so, the earnings report showed that Time Warner Cable continues to lose video subscribers. Now the company expects 2010 earnings of $3.25 to $3.50 per share, which is less than the $3.60 analysts had been forecasting.

Many cable operators have been losing video customers to satellite TV, but Time Warner Cable also faces stiff competition from Verizon Communications Inc. in New York City, a key market the phone company recently entered with its FiOS fiber-optic service.

Time Warner Cable earned $322 million, or 91 cents per share, in the fourth quarter. In the same period a year earlier it lost $8.16 billion, or $25.07 per share, because of a charge to write down the value of the rights that municipalities have granted it to provide cable TV.

Revenue rose 3 percent to $4.53 billion, in line with the expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Time Warner Cable’s earnings exceeded analysts’ expectations for a profit of 88 cents per share.

Video revenue rose just 1.6 percent to $2.69 billion, the smallest increase in at least two years. The company lost 105,000 video customers, and those who remained were buying fewer premium channels and movies on demand.

High-speed Internet revenue gained 7.5 percent to $1.16 billion. Digital phone service rose 11.3 percent to $484 million.

Time Warner Cable, which had warned in November that a third-quarter slowdown was spilling over to the fourth quarter, lost 55,000 customers overall in the quarter to end the year at 14.6 million.

For the year, Time Warner Cable earned $1.07 billion, or $3.05 per share, compared to a loss of $7.34 billion, or $22.55 per share, in 2008. Revenue rose 4 percent to $17.9 billion.