Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) released its fourth quarter and full-year earnings this morning before opening bell, reporting improving residential subscriber trends and the highest January customer relationship net adds in five years.
The company reported fourth quarter revenue of $5.6 billion, a 1.7% year over year increase. For the full year, revenue rose 3.4% to $22.1 billion. Diluted earnings per share were $1.89, while adjusted diluted earnings were $1.82 per share. For the full year, diluted earnings were $6.70 per share, while adjusted earnings were $6.61 per share.
Analysts had been expecting the company to report earnings of $1.74 per share on revenue of $5.6 billion. For the full year, they were expecting earnings of $6.55 per share on full-year revenue of $22.1 billion. Shares of Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) were little changed in premarket trading, as of this writing.
Breaking down Time Warner Cable’s results
Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) reported that its business services revenue grew more than 20% for the year, while its residential high-speed data revenue grew 14% for the year. The company’s business services revenue was the main driver of its full-year revenue growth. Time Warner Cable reported average revenue per residential customer relationship of $106.03 during the fourth quarter, a 2.2% increase, which the company said is the highest growth rate since the first quarter of 2012. Residential high-speed data average revenue per user rose 12.4% to $46.21.
The company said residential subscriber performance rose sequentially each month during the fourth quarter and continued to improve this month.
Time Warner Cable advances its offerings
Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) said it now offers residential high-speed data speeds of 100 Mbps in many cities and regions. The company more than doubled its residential wideband high-speed data subscribers year over year to 910,000 subscribers.
The company installed its first generation cloud-based guide with advanced video on demand portal on 2.8 million of its set-top boxes by the end of 2013. At the end of the year, the company’s video customers had access to an average of 183 HD channels.
Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) also expanded its Wi-Fi initiative, ending 2013 with 30,000 Wi-Fi access points. Most of its high-speed data customers have access to more than 200,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the U.S. The company also ended the year with 44,000 IntelligentHome customers, an increase of 32,000 subscribers, and made the TWC TV app available on the Amazon Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and smartphones, the Roku Box, Samsung’s smart TVs, and Xbox 360 gaming consoles.
Time Warner Cable raises dividend
Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) said it increased its regular quarterly dividend 15% to 75 cents per share, which is $3 per share annualized. That dividend will be payable in cash on March 17 to shareholders of record on Feb. 28.
In all of 2013, Time Warner Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC) returned $3.3 billion to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. That’s a 28% increase. Since the beginning of the company’s share buyback program in November 2010 through the end of 2013, Time Warner Cable bought back more than 25% of its outstanding shares for a total of $7.5 billion at an average price of $82.51 per share.
