NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comcast Corp reported stronger quarterly earnings as it benefited from surging ad sales and signed up customers to higher-priced packages of cable, voice and broadband service.
The largest U.S. cable company, which also increased its dividend by 19 percent, said net income rose to $1.02 billion, or 36 cents a share, from $955 million, or 33 cents a share, in the period a year ago.
COMCAST (CMCSA.NQ)s fourth-quarter revenue rose 7 percent to $9.7 billion, it said on Wednesday. That surpassed the $9.58 billion analysts had expected, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The increase in revenue came thanks to a surge in advertising at its cable networks. But it also reflects Comcast's concentration on upgrading customers to more expensive combinations of services, such as broadband and cable. Average revenue it earned for each video customer rose by 10.6 percent in the quarter.
That helped soften the blow of losing 135,000 basic video customers, those who pay for only the least expensive cable service. A tough economy plus intense competition from satellite and telecommunication company rivals, such as DirecTV
Still, this quarter's loss of basic video customers is far less than the 199,000 from a year before, suggesting the lower end of the cable business may be stabilizing.
More affluent customers, meanwhile, kept adding high-end services to their subscriptions. In the quarter, Comcast added 292,000 high-speed Internet customers, up 18 percent from a year before, and 257,000 voice customers, up about 6 percent.
Its earnings report comes just weeks after closing a deal to take control of NBC Universal, the entertainment company with a broadcast and cable networks, as well as theme parks and a movie studio. NBC Universal's results will be included beginning with Comcast's first-quarter earnings report.
(Reporting by Paul Thomasch, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
