Earnings: Cablevision Posts Q4 Loss On Newsday Writedown
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Charges related to its purchase of Long Island daily paper Newsday and the shuttering of its Voom HD service helped push Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) to a $321.4 million ( $1.11 per share) net loss in Q4. That compares to profits of $6.64 million ($0.02 cents per share) the year before. And despite the bad economy effecting most companies’ revenues, the recession could be helping boost its services as consumers stay home and watch cable TV, as Cablevision revs were up 11.4 percent to $2.05 billion. The company just missed hitting consensus estimates from FactSet analysts, which anticipated Cablevision’s Q4 revenues to come in $2.06 billion, according to Marketwatch. Furthermore, the company did report that basic video subs were down 3,800 or 0.1 percent.
SEE ALSO: Earnings Call: Cablevision: We Can Better Manage Newspapers’ Transition To Digital
Impairment charges were $402.4 million at Newsday—Cablevision acquired a 97 percent stake from The Tribune Company for about $650 million back in May— and $41 million at VOOM HD. The charges related to VOOM were slightly higher than previously expected.
More after the jump...
As for Newsday’s Q4 results, net revenues were $107.1 million, AOCF was $10.3 million and operating loss was $407.6 million. From the point the acquisition closed in July through the end of 2008, Newsday’s net revenues were $180.6 million, AOCF was $18.8 million and operating loss was $403.3 million.
—Slowing margins: BernsteinResearch’s Craig Moffett looks at why Cablevision has passed from growth to value to, these days, “deep, deep value.” Considering that in churn is not significantly different from last year, it didn’t offer any real discounts on customer acquisition and the fact that even advertising is holding up better than expected, could it be the the long-expected challenge from Verizon (NYSE: VZ) FiOS is impacting the company? No, it looks like the contracting housing market is. The real estate downturn, so prevalent elsewhere in the country for over a year, has now hit Cablevision’s prime areas on Long Island and New Jersey, following the Wall St. meltdown.
Release (PDF) | Webcast (10:00 AM EDT) | Transcript (via Seeking Alpha)
@davidaKaplan
Feb 26, 2009 9:34 AM ET
Posted In: Media & Publishing, Newspapers, TV, Cable & Telecom, Money, Earnings, Companies, Best Buy, Cablevision, Disney, ABC
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