Company Reports: DIRECTV's 4Q11 in the U.S. showed an unmistakable slowing, notes
Bernstein Research's
Craig Moffett.
The company's Latin American business, however, continued to fire on
all metrics. Among the key numbers in today's report: U.S. subscribers
grew by 125K, below Street consensus and less than half of 4Q10
numbers. ARPU broke through the $100 mark (at $101.38) but programming
costs jumped by 13% per subscriber. In contrast,
DIRECTV Latin America
showed revenues of $1.37B up 33% y/y with net sub additions of 590K,
well ahead of consensus and a 56% jump y/y. Overall revenues were $7.5B
with U.S. numbers "stronger than expected," according to
ISI's
Vijay Jayant. ---
Discovery reported a strong 2011
with revenues up 12% to $4.235B and free cash flow soaring 68% to
$1.042B. For the fourth quarter, revenues increased 11% y/y to $1.122B
with U.S. nets up 11% and international nets up 12%. ---
Knology saw 4Q revenues increase
4.6% y/y to $129.3M. Across the full year, the company added 1,262
video connections 8,292 voice connections, and 19,434 data connections; these include 9,000 connections acquired in its 2Q11
Fort Gordon transaction.
DISH LTE Closer: A U.S. bankruptcy court confirmed
TerreStar's reorganization plan to emerge from bankruptcy, another plus for presumptive buyer
DISH. With spectrum coming from TerreStar and
DBSD, DISH noted that, given final
FCC approval, it "would immediately begin the design and construction planning for the nation's first 100% LTE network."
Deals: CEO
Les Moonves has confirmed that
CBS is in discussions to produce original programming for
Netflix. More from
Bloomberg. ---
SES scored a long-term capacity deal with
Media Networks Latin America to expand DTH service across Central America and the Caribbean.
Housing Cheer: Our thanks to
ISI's
Vijay Jayant who passed on some interesting housing numbers from his colleague
Stan Shipley. Given the negative impact that the housing bust has had on media businesses, these should provide some cheer. Writes Shipley, "Housing starts in Jan increased +1.5% m/m to 699k thanks to the sharp +8.5% increase in the volatile multi-family starts; single-family starts declined -1.0%. Initial unemployment claims for the week of Feb 11 declined to 348k, bringing down the 4 week average to 365k from 367k."
Markets: Discovery's strong 4Q report helped boost the stock to a new 52-week intraday high of $46.36. ---
Motorola Solutions hit a 52-week intraday high of $48.23. --- Clearwire lost more than 10% of value in early day trading, with shares down 14.62% to $2.015.
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