Satellite : Major Earnings Round-Up

Wednesday was a big day for company reports. Here's the round-up:

News Corp.: Operating income at the media giant was up 16% during its Q2 to $1.5B, even though the number includes a negative $87M worth of charges related to the ongoing phone hacking scandal. Still, News' net income skyrocketed 71% y/y to $1.06B ($.42 per share), as compared to net income of $642M ($.24 per share), on quarterly revenue of $8.98B, a 2% y/y increase. The company said its impressive increases were led by growth in cable net programming, TV and films. Operating income from domestic cable channels increased 25% thanks to improved results at the company's RSNs and at Fox News. International cable earnings grew 8%, led by Latin America at Fox International.

Time Warner: Largely beating estimates, Q4 net income at Time Warner increased .5% to $773M ($.73 per share) from $769M ($.68 per share) from the year earlier. Revenue increased 5% y/y to $8.2B thanks to cable nets and films, with operating income increasing 17% to $1.7B during the period. The company posted adjusted EPS of $.94 for period compared to $0.67 for the year before. Diluted income per common share was $.76 as compared to $.68 in Q410. Subscription revenues from HBO increased 6% on the year ($495M) with advertising and content revs up 12% ($453M) and 21% ($202M), respectively.

Sprint: Consolidated net operating revenue of $8.7B during Q4 increased 5% y/y with adjusted OIBDA of $842M. The company reported total net sub adds of 1.6M - the most since 2005 - thanks to strong iPhone sales to 40% of new customers. Sprint's post-paid ARPU growth of $3.69 is "the largest y/y increase on record across the U.S. wireless industry." The company reported a Q4 net loss of $1.3B (a diluted loss of $.43 per share), including Sprint's $135M investment in Clearwire and $28 million in severance costs.

Virgin Media: Q4 revenue at Virgin increased 2% to £1B (.5B) for the period with massive growth of 134% in operating income for to £166M (2M) yielding an overall increase in income of 67.8% for the year. Mobile contracts increased 26% during the period to 1.5M, with net cable customer adds of 15K. Virgin posted 30K net BB adds, 273K new TiVo customers, and a loss of 8K telephone subs. Thanks largely to TiVo, the cable company recorded more than 1B VOD views during full-year 2011, a 14% y/y increase.
: Fta Files - FTA-GODS.COM Satellite : Major Earnings Round-Up
: Fta Files - FTA-GODS.COM Satellite : Major Earnings Round-Up

Disney (Tuesday): Fiscal Q1 revenues at Disney dipped 7% for its broadcasting arm to $1.5B with operating income down $69M to $226M. Operating income at the company's cable nets increased $196M to $967M, driven by affiliate revenue growth at ESPN. Disney reported a net income increase of 12% to $1.5B ($.80 per share), up from $1.3B ($.69 cents per). Total revenues increased 1% to $10.8B. CEO Bob Iger said the company's movie studios would join other studios in demanding that DVD firms like Redbox wait at least 28 days after a title's released before renting.

Others: Sinclair reported Q4 net broadcast revenue of $180.8M, a y/y decrease of 4.9% with operating income of $63.5M, as compared to $81.5M in Q410. The company said its 31% decline in national net broadcast revenue was offset by a 6% increase in retransmission (and other local) revenues. Sinclair reported diluted earnings per share of $.28, down from $.40 the year before. --- NetGear posted record Q4 net revenue of $309.2M, a 20% y/y increase. The company reported non-GAAP