Time Warner Cable CFO sees tougher 2009

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NEW YORK, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N) is on track to sell close to 2.5 million video, Internet and phone subscriptions this year, but will likely sell fewer services in 2009 due to the economic slowdown, Chief Financial Officer Rob Marcus said on Monday.

Marcus said the No. 2 U.S. cable company is likely to sign up fewer customers this year than it had originally anticipated, after new subscriptions growth slowed markedly in September, when investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and the financial crisis steepened.

"In 2008, we're on track to deliver pretty much close to 2.5 million additional revenue-generating units," Marcus told the Reuters Media Summit in New York.

Revenue-generating unit is a cable industry term used for each video, Internet and phone subscription sold.

"I would say coming in 2009 ... it's going to be less than that, though I have no doubt it will be a significant number," Marcus added.

Time Warner Cable had said on its third-quarter earnings call last month that it saw a slowdown in customers signing up for premium services, such as digital video recorder and pay-per-view TV.

Marcus said that it was extremely difficult to forecast the rate of growth next year due to the unprecedented nature of the U.S. downturn. "I don't think anything we've seen before is instructive of what we're seeing right now."

Cable companies are traditionally viewed as resilient to a downturn as Americans are not expected to drop their video subscriptions even if they spend less money on going out to theaters and restaurants.

Time Warner Cable, like other major cable companies, has seen its revenue growth boosted by adding Internet and phone subscriptions in recent years.

Marcus indicated that wireless substitution, replacing fixed line phones, may have have started to impact the growth in the number of new phone subscribers Time Warner Cable is adding.

"The slowdown in growth we've seen is across all our products and some element of that I do attribute to the cord-cutting phenomenon," said Marcus.

Time Warner Cable's profit margins are under pressure from rising programming costs and from broadcasters increasingly demanding cash for cable companies that carry their signals.

In October LIN TV Corp demanded that Time Warner Cable drop carriage of its broadcast channels in 13 cities after the two parties failed to reach a carriage agreement.