Dish Posts Lower Fourth-Quarter Financials, Adds Subs

Satellite TV giant Dish Network, led by chairman Charlie Ergen, on Wednesday reported lower fourth-quarter financials, but said it added new subscribers during the period.

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The company signed up about 14,000 net new pay TV subscribers in the fourth quarter to end 2012 with 14.056 million. That was up from 13.967 million total subscribers at the end of 2011.

Fourth-quarter earnings of $209 million were down 33 percent from $313 million in the year-ago quarter, and Dish's quarterly revenue of $3.59 billion was down slightly from $3.63 billion in the same period.

The company cited higher programming costs, increased subscriber acquisition costs, as well as Voom litigation settlement expenses as affecting its latest full-year results. Dish and AMC Networks settled the Voom litigation last year.

"One of our key stories of the year was the change in our customer trajectory," said Dish CEO Joseph Clayton. "During 2012, Dish added about 89,000 net pay TV subscribers after having lost approximately 166,000 net pay TV subscribers in 2011."

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai