Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable TV company with operations and subscribers in Connecticut, on Wednesday posted a fourth-quarter profit that beat analysts’ expectations as more customers signed up for multiple services and the loss of video subscribers slowed, The Associated Press reports.
It also added more broadband Internet and telephone customers than analysts were looking for — surprisingly strong results that caused the share price to climb 72 cents, or 3 percent to $24.88 in morning trading.
“There’s not a single meaningful operating number that it didn’t beat,” Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said in a research report.
The Philadelphia-based company with operations in 39 states said it lost 135,000 video subscribers in the quarter, fewer than the 206,000 subscriber loss analysts expected and less than the 199,000 it lost a year earlier. It finished the year with 22.8 million subscribers.
There were fewer cancellations by people who signed up mainly for promotional prices in 2009, and more people stuck around thanks to more high-definition channels and expanded programming brought on by the move to digital delivery.
It added 292,000 Internet customers, above the 212,000 expected, and 257,000 phone customers, also better than the 210,000 expected. It ended the year with 17 million Internet subscribers and 8.6 million voice customers.
The company reported net income of $1.02 billion, or 36 cents per share, for the three months ended in December, up from $955 million, or 33 cents, a year ago.
Excluding one-time items, earnings came to 35 cents per share, beating the 32 cents expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue rose 7 percent to $9.72 billion from $9.07 billion. That also beat the $9.58 billion expected by analysts.
The company recently became the new majority owner of NBC Universal. Its deal to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal closed in January, so the unit’s results were not reflected in the latest results for Comcast.
