Time Warner Cable profit tops Street as subscriber additions rise

Cable operator Charter Communications, in which John Malone’s Liberty Broadband owns a big stake and which has agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable, on Thursday said it swung to a third-quarter profit and managed to grow its video subscribers.

Revenue increased 3.6% year-over-year to $5.92 billion, but fell short of estimates of $5.96 billion.

In all, the company reported a profit of $437 million, or $1.53 a share, down from $499 million, or $1.76 a share, a year earlier. Business Services revenue climbed 15.5%, while Residential Services revenue increased 2.6%.

Time Warner Cable also said it lost 7,000 residential video subscribers in the three months ended September 30, far less than the 45,000 it lost in the second quarter. It added 237,000 voice subscribers and 218,000 triple play subscribers for its best third quarter since 2007 on both metrics. Overall residential customer relationships were up by 147,000 in the period, its best Q3 ever and the first time it reported positive net additions since 2008.

Excluding items, it earned $1.62 per share, beating analysts average estimate of $1.57 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares in the company, up 21% this year, were inactive premarket.

Revenue breakout: In residential ($4.735B), Video revenues of $2.453B (down 1.8%); High-speed data, $1.772B (up 9.4%); Voice, $483M (up 1.5%). The company saw cross-border volumes increase 16%, and the number of processed transactions rose 12% to 12.3 billion.

As of this writing, shares of MasterCard were down 0.06% at $100 per share in premarket trading.