Company Reports:
Time Warner's 4Q came in ahead of expectations with revenues up 5% to $8.193B and adjusted operating income up 20% to $1.705B. The media giant's cable nets missed expectations, however, coming in at just under $3.5B. Said
Collins Stewart's
Tom Eagan, "We are slightly concerned that the AOI margin at the Cable Network (division) may be under some pressure in FY12 due to higher programming costs." The question, said he, is whether higher
Turner net ratings bring in enough revenue. The company also announced an 11% dividend increase (to $0.26/share) and an additional $4B stock buyback program. For more info from TWX go
here. ---
Sprint's 4Q11 report showed revenues up slightly (to $8.72B) and OIBDA modestly above consensus but, said
Bernstein Research's
Craig Moffett, "Other key underlying metrics – especially churn rate – were meaningfully worse than expected ... and guidance was light." Asked he, "Is this what the bottom looks like?" ---
Virgin Media closed its 4Q11 with fundamentals improved from the previous quarter as the company added 80K broadband subscribers, 273K new TiVo subscribers (a high-five to
Tom Rogers and crew for that one!) and showed a 5% growth in operating cash flow. On the downside were low TV subscriber adds (1K) and a decline in telephone subs. Still, said
Collins Stewart's
Tom Eagan, "We expect the company to continue to grow faster than many of its peers due to its cost-effective expansion of its footprint and ARPU increases."
Highs, Lows & $$$s: If you're a video provider, get ready to pay more money to
Disney (big surprise, huh?). On a conference call yesterday, CEO
Bob Iger predicted that “Affiliate revenue will kick up due to (the recently closed deal with)
Comcast ....” ---
CBS reached a 52-week intraday high of $29.95 in early trading. ---
Comcast also hit a 52-week marker with a high of $27.21. ---
Sinclair Broadcast Group. declared a cash dividend of $0.12/share for both Class A and Class B shares, payable 3/15/12.
Deals: The latest in the OTT, everybody's-in-bed-with-everybody saga includes a deal between
Viacom and
Amazon. It will give Amazon Prime members access to streaming of more than 15,000 titles from Viacom networks. ---
Rentrak says ad group
Interpublic will use its TV audience measurement data to guarantee some deals. More from
Mediapost.com. Apple v. Cable:
Here's a great piece on "How
Apple Could ... Screw Cable Companies" from the folks at
Business Insider.
Scandal du Jour: It's starting to sound like old news but that
News Corp hacking scandal continues to spread. Most recently,
James Harding, editor of News Corp's
Times of London apologized to a
High Court Judge for providing misleading information about a 2009 email hacking incident. More from the
WSJ. In addition,
Reuters
reports that U.S. investigations into possible criminal violations by
NWS employees of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act are heating up.
But no evidence has surfaced over News Corp hacking within the U.S.
People: Discovery CEO
David Zaslav has joined the
Univision board of directors. --- The shakeup continues at
Yahoo as board chairman
Roy Bostock and three long time board members are out the door.
More News in The Morning BRIDGE ... early tomorrow in your in-box.•
