Dish Network Grows Profit as Subscribers Shrink

Satellite company misses Wall Street’s sales mark in third quarter

Dish Network Logo

Dish Network missed sales estimates but bested Wall Street’s bottomline predictions with its third quarter financial results, which were released early Monday morning. Charlie Ergen’s satellite TV company saw an increase in the number of pay-TV subscribers who ditched the service, however.

Media stock analysts had forecast earnings per share of $0.39 on $3.79 billion in revenue, per Yahoo Finance; Zacks had EPS coming in a penny higher. Dish actually posted diluted EPS of $0.42 on $3.73 billion in sales.

The company’s net income rose 34 percent year over year to $196 million, up from $146 million in the comparable quarter last year. So that’s good.

Unfortunately, Dish keeps losing its pay-TV customers. Net subscribers in that category declined approximately 23,000 over the measured 90-day period, compared to a loss of approximately 12,000 in Q3 2014. This, despite more customers being added on a gross basis during 2015’s fiscal third quarter.

The company closed Q3 with 13.909 million pay-TV subscribers, compared to 14.041 million at the end of third quarter 2014. Broadband is a slightly better story: Dish added 13,000 users there.

DISH stock closed Friday at $63.74, up $0.39 or 0.62 percent. An executive-hosted conference call is set for Monday at noon ET.

Comments