Dish Profit Rises; EchoStar Profit Falls

Dish Network Corp. (DISH) said its fourth-quarter profit jumped 38% as it added subscribers to both its pay-TV and broadband services.

Dish, which has faced tough competition from pay-TV rivals as well as the proliferation of online entertainment, has been adding to its broadband subscriber base while struggling to hold on to pay-TV subscribers. Last month, the company won another legal victory last month in its dispute with Fox Broadcasting Co. over ad-skipping and recording features on Dish's "Hopper" service.

Meanwhile, Dish has been fighting with wireless venture LightSquared since last year, although LightSquared said that it would work with Dish's chairman, Charlie Ergen, on restructuring. Mr. Ergen has a stake in LightSquare's debt. Earlier this month, a judge ruled that LightSquared could take a bankruptcy loan of $33 million from its bank-debt holders, with more than half the money coming from Mr. Ergen.

Last month, Dish walked away from a $2.2 billion offer for a large chunk of LightSquare's spectrum assets.

Also during the fourth quarter, Dish closed all of video-rental chain Blockbuster's stores in the U.S., as well as its DVD-by-mail service although it continued running its streaming service under the brand's name. The company now counts the closed businesses as discontinued operations.

Dish posted earnings of $288 million, or 63 cents a share, up from $209.1 million, or 46 cents a share. The year-ago quarter included a loss of $25 million from discontinued operations, compared with a loss of $7.1 million in the most recent period.

Revenue rose 6.6% to $3.54 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had projected earnings of 41 cents and revenue of $3.59 billion.

Dish added about 654,000 pay-TV subscribers, versus a gain of 662,000 during the same period in the previous year. The company ended the period with about nearly 14.06 million pay-TV subscribers, a slight increase from the figure at the end of the year-ago period.

The company also added about 80,000 net broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter, versus additions of 57,000 in the previous year's quarter. Its broadband subscriber base rose 13% from the third quarter to 436,000.

EchoStar--the set-top box maker that spun out of Dish in 2008--posted income of $4.5 million, or five cents a share, down from $26.2 million, or 28 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 2.8% to $808.1 million.

Shares of Dish, which closed at $57.07 Thursday, and EchoStar, which closed at $47.91, were inactive premarket.

Write to Michael Calia at [e-mail]

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