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Time Warner Cable, the first operator at bat this earnings season, lost video subscribers last quarter but hooked up lots of consumers to the Web as high-speed Internet drove the company’s business.
Earnings jumped 18% to $382 million for the three months ended in March. Revenue rose 6.4% to $5.1 billion. Time Warner ended the quarter with about 12.5 million video subs, a net loss of 94,000. That excludes the acquisition last summer of smaller cabler Insight Communications. “Video continues to be a soft spot,” acknowledged CEO Glenn Britt during a conference call. But revenue from high-speed data grew 9.6% to $1.2 billion as subs and pricing both rose. It added 214,000 high-speed customers. Britt said the company’s gaining traction in its effort to sell high-speed service as a single play — without video or voice. The video subs that fell off, he said, were mostly single-play. That said, he announced that the company will be adding 1,000 new staffers to its sales team. Britt claimed the cabler is taking share in the high-speed market against telcos. AT&T’s U-verse crosses 25% of Time Warner’s footprint, and Verizon FiOs has an 11% overlap. Operating expenses rose 6% on higher programming costs. Revenue at the business services division, while still a small piece of the company, surged 37% to $429 million. DVR net ads of 92,000 were the best in two years, driven by triple-play promotions, Britt said.
