DirecTV Reports Strong 3Q Sub Growth And Revenues But Misses Earnings Expectations

The satellite company’s ambitious NFL Sunday Ticket promotions and expansion efforts in Latin America pretty much delivered in 3Q. The company reported net income of $516M, up 8% vs the quarter last year, on revenues of $6.84B, up 14%. That revenue figure topped the $6.74B that the Street expected. Earnings, at 70 cents a share, fell short of the 73 cent forecast. The company says its profit took a hit from higher programming costs, including its new NFL contract, and higher subscription acquisition costs. But at least the customer acquisition effort paid off: DirecTV ended the quarter with 19.76M U.S. customers — up 4% from last year, making this the company’s best 3Q in seven years. At the same time, average monthly subscriber payments increased 3.6% vs last year to $92.21. Priceincreases for DirecTV programming and leased set top boxes outweighed the NFL promotion discounts. In Latin America, DirecTV ended 3Q with 7.28M customers, up 34% from last year.CEO Mike White says that “we plan to build on this momentum by debuting several compelling new products and services including a greatly enhanced DirecTV Anywhere offering that will enable consumers to stream live-TV programming and on-demand movies to their mobile devices, as well as a brand new HD user interface and the much anticipated launch of our home media center.”