Thursday’s biggest gaining and declining stocks

Orlando, FL 5/3/12 (StreetBeat) -- Shares of the following companies made notable moves in U.S. trading Thursday:

Gainers

Teradata Corp. (NYSE: TDC +4.95%) shares rose 5.3% Thursday. Earlier, the company reported strong first-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates, as the firm revised its 2012 outlook modestly higher.

Kensey Nash Corp. (Nasdaq: KNSY +32.20%) shares jumped 32%. Dutch life-sciences company Royal DSM NV agreed to acquire the biomedical company for about $337 million in cash, at a premium of about 33%.

Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. (NYSE: SNI +6.31%) shares were up 6.4% Thursday after the parent of cable channels Food Network and HGTV reported first-quarter results that easily surpassed most forecasts on strong ad sales.

Decliners

Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC -5.24%) shares were down 7.3% Thursday on a first-quarter revenue figure that fell short of most analysts’ estimates. Miller Tabak cut its rating on the cable-television operator to neutral from buy, thouugh the company reported a gain in basic-video customers during the period, in contrast to peers Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA +0.08%) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC -0.64%), the two largest U.S. cable companies.

Prudential Financial Inc. (NYSE: PRU -8.16%) shares dropped 8.1%. Late Wednesday, financial results showed the company swinging to a first-quarter loss on charges relating to currency fluctuations and derivative impacts, mostly related to the Japanese yen’s decline against the U.S. dollar.

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Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) 1Q earnings up 30 percent

Orlando, FL 5/2/12 (StreetBeat) -- Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA), the country's largest cable company, reported a 30 percent profit increase in the first quarter, beating expectations on the strength of Super Bowl advertising and its popular broadband service.

The Philadelphia-based cable company said Wednesday that its net income rose to $1.224 billion, or 45 cents per share, for the January to March period from $943 million, or 34 cents per share, a year ago.

Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of 42 cents per share for the latest quarter

Revenue rose to $14.9 billion, above analysts' expectation of $14.4 billion. The increase was 9.6 percent compared with the combined cable and NBC Universal results a year ago.

Comcast's acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal, which owns TV channels and movie studios, closed at the end of January last year.

NBC Universal's results shone in the quarter. It accounts for a third of Comcast's revenue, but grew much faster, at 18 percent from last year. Revenue at the NBC broadcast network grew 37 percent thanks to the Super Bowl. Fox broadcast it last year.

Excluding the Super Bowl, NBC's revenue grew 17 percent, helped by improving prime-time ratings and shows like "The Voice" and "Smash."

At Universal Studios, revenue grew 22 percent on the theatrical success of "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" and "Safe House."

Comcast's more predictable cable business revenue grew at lower pace — 5.7 percent from last year.

CEO Brian Roberts has suggested that Comcast might be able to reverse the long-standing industry-wide trend of cable-TV subscribers cancelling in favor of satellite and phone-company TV services, but that prospect was not in evidence in the first quarter: Comcast lost 37,000 cable subscribers, roughly the same number it lost in the same quarter last year.

Comcast added 439,000 Internet subscribers. That was the best quarterly result in four years. Meanwhile other cable companies report a slowdown in the recruitment of new subscribers, since most households already have broadband. Comcast appears to be gaining subscribers from households with slower phone-company "DSL" broadband.

Comcast shares slipped 20 cents to $30.40 after initially rising as high as $32 in premarket trading.

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Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) in talks for cable partnership

Austin, Tx 3/7/12 (StreetBeat) -- Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) Chief Executive Reed Hastings has quietly met with some of the largest U.S. cable companies in recent weeks to discuss adding the online movie streaming service to their cable offerings, according to sources familiar with matter.

In what would ratchet up its competition with HBO, the talks could lead to Netflix becoming available as another on-demand option for cable subscribers through their set-top boxes, according to three people familiar with the talks. If a partnership came to fruition, a cable operator might offer Netflix as an additional option added onto a subscriber's cable bill, according to a fourth person.

Any partnership would be a major about-face for many in the traditional cable industry who had initially seen Netflix as a threat to their $100 billion-a-year business.

Hastings has strongly hinted at investor conferences in recent weeks about the possibility of Netflix one day being a cable channel rival to premium networks like Time Warner Inc's HBO.

"It's not in the short term, but it's in the natural direction for us in the long term," said Hastings, speaking at an investor conference last week. "Many (cable service providers) would like to have a competitor to HBO, and they would bid us off of HBO."

While most industry watchers considered Hastings' comments as little more than thoughts about the future, people familiar with the talks said he has already met with senior cable executives to discuss how such a partnership might work. At least one cable operator could experiment with offering Netflix by the end of the year, said one of the people.

A Netflix representative declined comment on any talks with cable operators.

While Netflix offers mainly old TV shows and movies through its Web streaming service, it had been seen as a threat by some cable operators and cable networks worried the $7.99 a month service would lead to customers dropping the much more expensive cable TV package, a fear that has become known in the industry as "cord cutting."

Time Warner Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes famously dismissed the idea that Netflix was a serious threat by equating the service to the "Albanian Army." More recently, however, Bewkes and other media chiefs, including Viacom's Philippe Dauman, have been much more positive about Netflix, in part because the service has boosted their coffers by licensing older shows.

Comcast Corp, (Nasdaq: CMCSA) the largest U.S. cable operator, last month launched its own online video service for subscribers called Streampix that is supposed to be its answer to Netflix. Comcast executives say they will do everything they can to keep subscribers watching video through its own systems.

Netflix also faces more competition from incumbents including Verizon Communications' joint venture with Coinstar Inc's Redbox due later this year.

There are also significant plans still in the works at Google Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc in the online video space.

Even if a deal is reached in the near-term, actually receiving Netflix through a cable provider could still take months to launch. Hastings would first need to rework his licensing deals with programmers since most existing contracts will not allow Netflix to deliver their shows on a cable box, according to a senior programming executive.

Offering Netflix through a cable package could help the streaming service avoid a separate potential clash with cable operators over rising costs for online video traffic over their Internet pipes. Cable operators are the dominant high speed Internet providers in the U.S. and have been trying to devise methods to manage their costs and traffic of online video.

Time Warner Cable is the first major cable company to stick its neck out with a trial in Texas to charge users for the amount of bandwidth they use. Online video is commonly acknowledged as the heaviest share of Internet traffic.

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TV: Not Dead Yet

Palm Beach, FL 11/11/11 (StreetBeat) --A few years ago, many people were predicting the end of television as we know it. The rise of video-on-demand, social games and other Web-based diversions all were supposed to kill TV. Who could possibly want to watch an antiquated, live network or cable show, the theory went, when one could Tweet, surf Facebook or watch something cached on Hulu or streamed on Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) instead?

Fast-forward to today. The TV business certainly has undergone some seismic shifts due to new technologie. But the bottom line is, people are still watching the tube. Nielsen predicted that the number of U.S. homes with TV access would hit 115.9 million in the 2010-11 season, up 1 million from the year before and representing an all-time high. American teenagers, one of the most tech-savvy segments of the population, have seen their TV viewership actually increase six percent in the last five years, according to a Nielsen report. And major, live TV events continue to draw enormous audiences: 111 million viewers in the U.S. watched the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2011 Super Bowl, while 38.6 million tuned in to see last season’s American Idol winner crowned.

Why has live TV remained so powerful? Part of it, obviously, is community. People still like to be a part of major world events and discuss them while they’re fresh—not a week later, when everyone knows which handsome bachelor “The Bachelorette” picked, or who won the big game. But there’s a new twist to that today: Thanks to the rise of social media and the Internet, people can discuss live TV while it’s happening. It’s even given rise to a new term, “social TV.” A recent study by Ovum, a business/technology research firm in the U.K., found that almost 40% of TV viewers discuss particular TV shows via social media while they’re watching them. This is evidenced by the average one million tweets generated during each of the seven games of this year’s World Series and 4.5 million from this year’s Superbowl viewers. Some shows, like “The Voice”, a live singing contest, even show viewer tweets on air.

More broadly, 51% of consumers surveyed said they used the Internet to access news or information while watching TV—the “second screen” phenomenon. The upshot: Rather than being a replacement for TV, many Internet technologies are proving complimentary; the online environment is the new water cooler where people gossip with each other about TV shows and other topics. Indeed, the new stereotype of a couch potato is fast becoming someone splayed out on his or her couch, snacks in hand, pecking away periodically at a laptop or tablet to trade comments with friends.

Equally important, the nature of TV content has changed profoundly over the last several years to favor live viewing. Today, reality, talk and contest-type programs, a la “American Idol,” “The Biggest Loser” and “Dancing with the Stars,” dominate the airwaves. Old-fashioned comedies and dramas no longer sit at the top. (In the 2010-11 season, the top-rated, prime-time network shows were, in order, two “American Idol” episodes, “Dancing with the Stars”, “Sunday Night NFL Football” and, then, finally, “NCIS.”) And to fully participate in some of these programs, like Idol, one must watch them live. Otherwise, you can’t vote for the winner. And people like to vote—over 100 million votes were cast in this year’s Idol season finale. And even for traditional broadcast shows, social media presents the opportunity for “spoilers” from your network, so you better watch your show live to avoid missing out on the surprise ending in the season finale of your favorite drama.

That said, it doesn’t mean people are going to be watching all their TV on an actual TV set in the coming years. Cable and satellite companies are all working feverishly to catch up to new, Internet content-providers like Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, AppleTV, Roku and, of course, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN). The traditional players, like Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), are testing new technologies to allow them to deliver shows and movies via Internet protocol, which means they can be beamed via broadband connections to multiple devices—PCs, smartphones, tablets, whatever. It’s a concept known in the industry as “TV Everywhere”, and it’s the natural evolution of online video. It’s also a natural evolution of IP: The Internet has gradually chewed through countless traditional industries, from data to voice to music, and TV is one of the last analog bastions.

There are some obstacles to the IP-video revolution, including securing rights for specific content and figuring out how to measure viewership when people are watching shows on multiple devices. But the cable and satellite providers have a big incentive to figure it out—namely, keeping their subscribers. Today’s on-the-go consumers, who expect to complete most computing tasks on a mobile phone or an iPad, are also demanding the kind of high-quality video they get on their living room TVs when they’re out of the house. And right now, the video experience on computers, smartphones and other mobile devices—especially for live content—can still be lacking. Current pay TV providers are in the best position to be a one-stop source for high-quality video, anywhere and everywhere. Many start-up companies, including ours, are working to provide them with cutting-edge technologies to make that happen—keeping TV alive (with a little help from Simon Cowell).

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A Look at Cable TV Earnings Reports

Tallahassee, FL 11/1/11 (StreetBeat) - Comcast Corp (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) reported stronger quarterly results on Wednesday, confirming that it pays to have a strong lineup of cable networks -- at least while advertisers keep spending.

Against all odds, advertisers continue to scoop up commercial time on television, and cable networks such as Time Warner's TNT or Comcast's USA have been major beneficiaries. Subscription fees have only helped. That point was driven home on Wednesday when Time Warner reported revenue from its cable networks rose 7 percent. Comcast, whose cable business is run through its majority interest in NBC Universal, showed a 12 percent increase.

"As you know, cable networks drive the profitability of NBC Universal and they continue to perform well," said Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts, who has staked his reputation on last year's $30 billion deal for NBC Universal. "We are investing in programing to make them even more valuable to customers and distributors."

Comcast's cable network results stand out even more when compared to the performance of its flagship broadcast TV network NBC, whose prime-time schedule has struggled for years. Already NBC has canceled two shows it just rolled out for the new TV season, "Playboy Club" and "Free Agents."

At Time Warner, where CEO Jeff Bewkes wants to cut costs and focus the company squarely on creating content for TV, movies and magazines, advertising sales climbed 6 percent. It cited strong pricing at its Turner networks, home to original shows such as "The Closer," the late-night host Conan O'Brien, news on CNN and sports including baseball and auto racing. Overall, Time Warner reported third quarter income of $822 million, or 78 cents a share, up from $522 million, or 46 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose a better-than-expected 27 percent to 79 cents a share.

Along with its cable business, the company got a big lift from the latest installment of the Harry Potter movie series. Its stock slipped 1 percent to $33.48, however, on what analysts described as concerns about future growth prospects.

To many observers, the continued strength of national advertising comes as a surprise. Just two years ago, in reaction to the recession, overall U.S. ad spending dropped by percent to $163 billion. Today's stubbornly bad jobs and housing markets -- couple with Europe's debt crisis -- would seem the sort of troubles that would have advertisers once more slashing budgets. Advertisers instead appear to be betting that the best way to jump-start sales is to keep their brands in front of consumers with billboards, digital campaigns and, particularly, TV commercials.

Heading into Wednesday, the economy was a major question facing media companies, particularly Comcast. Not only does Comcast rely on advertising from its TV networks, its chief business of selling broadband, video and telephone services relies heavily on the housing market and consumer confidence.
Overall, it added 229,000 telephone, video and Internet customers. That satisfied Wall Street and calmed worries that arose last week when Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems Corp, two rivals, posted disappointing subscriber numbers.

Comcast reported third-quarter net income of $908 million, or 33 cents a share, up from $867 million, or 31 cents a share, in the period a year ago. Shares of Comcast rose 2.2 percent to $23.50.

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