Time Warner Cable beats by $0.08, reports revs in-line; raises quarterly dividend to $0.75/share from $0.65/share prior
Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $1.82 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.08 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $1.74; revenues rose 1.7% year/year to $5.58 bln vs the $5.56 bln consensus.
The growth in residential high-speed data revenue was the result of an increase in average revenue per subscriber, primarily due to an increase in equipment rental charges and a greater percentage of subscribers purchasing higher-priced tiers of service, as well as year-over-year growth in the number of high-speed data subscribers.
For both the fourth quarter and full year, the decline in advertising revenue was primarily due to lower political advertising revenue, partially offset by growth in non-political advertising revenue (primarily associated with advertising inventory sold on behalf of other video distributors).
Political advertising revenue was $7 million and $28 million in the fourth quarter and full year of 2013, respectively, compared to $60 million and $114 million for the fourth quarter and full year of 2012, respectively.
Residential Customer Relationships decreased by 85,000 to 14.4 million, driven by losses early in the quarter related to the programming disputes with CBS and Journal Communications.
Video programming costs grew primarily due to an increase in average monthly video programming costs per video subscriber, offset in part by a decline in video subscribers.
Average monthly video programming costs per video subscriber increased 7.7% year over year to $33.70 for the fourth quarter of 2013 and 8.0% to $33.62 for the full year of 2013, primarily driven by contractual rate increases and the carriage of new networks.
Dividend: Co also announced that the Company raised its regular quarterly dividend by 15 percent to $0.75 per share; $3.00 per share on an annualized basis. The quarterly dividend is payable in cash on March 17, 2014 to stockholders of record at the close of business on February 28, 2014.