Comcast quarterly profit declines, loses subs
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O), the largest U.S. cable operator, on Thursday posted a fall in first-quarter net profit and a drop in basic video subscribers as it faced fierce competition from phone and satellite companies.
Net profit declined to $732 million, or 24 cents a share, from $837 million, or 26 cents a share, a year earlier.
Profit rose to $588 million, or 19 cents a share from $537 million, or 17 cents a share, after excluding a one-time gain related to the unwinding of a cable partnership in the first quarter of 2007 in Texas and Kansas, and a partnership with Insight Communications in 2008, Comcast said.
Revenue rose 14 percent to $8.39 billion.
Wall Street expected Comcast to post revenue of $8.17 billion and per-share profit of 19 cents excluding items, according to Reuters Estimates.
Comcast said it lost 57,000 basic video subscribers during the period compared with nearly 83,000 additions a year-ago.
Eight analysts polled by Reuters had expected Comcast to lose around 73,000 basic subscribers.
It added 494,000 digital video subscribers and 492,000 high-speed Internet subscribers. It also added 639,000 digital phone subscribers though it was an overall net addition of 529,000 phone subscribers.
Spencer Wang, an analyst at Bear Stearns, had expected Comcast to add 478,000 digital subscribers, 335,000 high speed Internet subscribers and an increase of 639,000 digital phone subscribers.
Comcast, which has more than 24 million subscribers including video, Internet and phone customers, has been facing tougher competition from satellite TV companies DIRECTV Group (DTV.O) and DISH Network Corp (DISH.O), as well as new telephone operator entrants to video such as Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and AT&T Inc (T.N).
(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke, editing by Maureen Bavdek)
