quarterly reports

Charter exceeded Wall Street estimates in the second quarter, reporting earnings of $5.29 a share and revenue of $12.8 billion. Analysts’ consensus expectation was for earnings of $4.79 and revenue of $12.6 billion.

During the three-month period ended June 30, the Seattle-based company reported profit of $7.78 billion, or $15.12 per share compared to $5.24 billion, or $10.30 a share, during the year-ago period. Revenue jumped 27% to $113.08 billion.

A significant comeback for NBCUniversal paced Comcast’s results in the second quarter as the media giant handily beat Wall Street forecasts. Total revenue climbed 20% to $28.5 billion, while earnings per share increased 22% to 84 cents. Wall Street analysts had expected earnings of 67 cents a share and revenue of $27.2 billion.

Revenue jumped 56% to $28.58 billion from $18.32 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $3.04 per share and revenue of $24.85 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

YouTube contributed $7 billion in revenue — up big from last year.

The San Francisco-based company earned $65.6 million, or 8 cents per share, in the April-June quarter. That’s up from a loss of $1.38 billion, or $1.75 per share, a year earlier. Revenue jumped 74% to $1.19 billion from $683.4 million, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations. Ad revenue in the U.S. alone nearly doubled.

HBO and HBO Max added 2.8 million subscribers in the second quarter, reaching 47 million in the U.S. and helping parent AT&T beat Wall Street forecasts. Total AT&T revenue of $44 billion rose almost 8% from the year-earlier period and topped analysts’ consensus estimate of $42.6 billion. Earnings per share went up 7% to 89 cents, well ahead of analysts’ outlook of 79 cents.

On Tuesday, Netflix reported its worst slowdown in subscriber growth in eight years as people emerge from their pandemic cocoons. But it thinks it has an answer to that: Video games.

Disney revenue slid 13% in the fiscal second quarter, but earnings per share nearly doubled, beating Wall Street expectations. Streaming once again was the highlight of the financial report, but growth of Disney+ moderated significantly during the period. It reached 103.6 million global subscribers, up from 94 million as of the previous quarter. Analysts had expected a tally of around 109 million, with the miss causing the company’s shares to tumble in after-hours trading. Revenue of $15.6 billion fell below the consensus forecast from analysts, who had been looking for $15.87 billion.

The increase to $727 million is driven by continued growth in subscription revenue and record first quarter advertising and marketing services (“AMS”) revenues.

It predicts station revenue for the second quarter “be up in the high-teens percent range. That includes core ad revenue up in the mid-40% range,” CFO Jason Combs told analysts. And for the company’s networks division — the former Ion operation, Katz Networks and Newsy — revenues are expected to be up about 20%.

The drop to $313 million reflected the sale of WPIX New York and lower core revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

AMC Networks today reported a 6% downturn in revenue during the first quarter due to a slump in advertising and content licensing, but earnings per share beat Wall Street forecasts. Total revenue of $691.7 million fell from $734.4 million in the year-earlier period, missing analysts’ consensus estimate of $722.3 million. Earnings per share, though, topped the Street at $2.02, or $2.98 on an adjusted basis. Analysts on average were expecting $1.87

Comscore posted a loss in the first quarter, but reported a small increase in revenue. The report follows Comscore resetting its finances with a $204 million investment from Charter, Qurate Retail and Cerberus. The first quarter net loss was $36.4 million, or 49 cents a share, compared to a $13.2 million loss, or $19 cents a share, a year ago. The 2021 loss includes a $15.3 million non-chase charge related to the recapitalization.

Roku kept rolling in the first quarter, reporting a 35% rise in active accounts, to 53.6 million, along with stronger-than-expected financial results. Revenue grew 79% compared with the same quarter a year ago, hitting $574.2 million, far higher than the consensus forecast by Wall Street analysts for $490.6 million.

ViacomCBS exceeded Wall Street earnings expectations in the first quarter, paced by the addition of 6 million global streaming subscribers. Revenue came in at $7.4 billion for the period ending March 31, ahead of analysts’ consensus forecast for $7.2 billion. Earnings per share of $1.42 also cleared the bar and rose 75% from the year-earlier quarter.

Fox Corp. beat Wall Street analysts’ forecasts for its fiscal third quarter, with results that reflected difficult comparisons with the Super Bowl period a year earlier. Earnings per share came in at 96 cents during the period ending March 31, well ahead of analysts’ consensus for 58 cents. Total revenue reached $3.22 billion, about $100 million ahead of the Street but down from $3.44 billion in the same quarter in 2020. Affiliate revenue increased 10%, powered by an 18% gain in the Television unit.

The decrease to $1.5 billion comes from lower political ad revenue. Core revenues, which excludes political revenues, totaled $367 million, an increase of 3% versus $358 million in the first quarter of 2020, benefiting from more local sports games taking place in the quarter compared to the same period a year ago.

The increase to $1.1 billion from 1Q 2020 was boosted by a higher distribution fee revenue (up 13%) and digital revenue growth of 18%. Core ad revenue was down 1.4%.

It says the increase from a year ago to $544 million was driven by combined local and national broadcast advertising revenue of $260 million and retransmission revenue of $247 million.

Dish Network’s first quarter net income and revenues rose despite the loss of about 230,000 pay TV subscribers. Dish said  the drop in subscribers was smaller than the 413,000 that departed a year ago. The company now has 11.06 million pay TV subscribers. First quarter net income was $630 million, or 99 cents a share, compared to $73 million, or 13 cents a year a year ago.

The San Francisco-based company earned $68 million, or 8 cents per share, in the January-March period. That’s up from a loss of $8.4 million, or 1 cent per share, a year earlier. Revenue grew 28% to $1.04 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting a loss of 2 cents per share on revenue of $1.03 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

The company said Thursday that its first-quarter profit more than tripled from a year ago, fueled by the growth of online shopping. It also posted revenue of more than $100 billion, the second quarter in row that the company has passed that milestone.

Non-political spot advertising, retrans money and digital drove the station group total to $200.5 million.

NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock had 42 million signups in the first quarter — up from the 33 million it reported three months ago — benefiting from the recent addition of exclusive domestic streaming rights to WWE Network and The Office. Parent Comcast also posted a huge earnings beat with EPS of $0.71 — up 54% from the year earlier, on revenue of $27.5 billion, up 2.5%.

Apple sped right past Wall Street’s expectations for its second fiscal quarter of 2021. For the three months ending on March 27, Apple reported $89.6 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $1.40. That was above the Wall Street expectations of $77.35 million in revenue and 99 cents per share. Apple hit a new high in revenue from its services and Mac sales in the quarter, with more than $9 billion in Mac sales. Services revenue totaled nearly $17 billion the quarter. International sales accounted for 67% of the quarter’s revenue.

Facebook hit 2.85 billion monthly active users, or MAUs, last quarter (up 10%) and 1.88 billion daily users (up 8%) as ad-driven revenue surged 48% to $26.2 billion, crushing forecasts. Earnings per share of $3.30 — up 93% – were also a beat as the social media giant’s advertising muscle powers through the cloud of antitrust lawsuits, Congressional critics and heat from Apple CEO Tim Cook — as the tech giants report dueling quarterly earnings Wednesday afternoon.

Discovery Inc. missed the first-quarter earnings forecasts by quite a bit. Q1 was the launch quarter of streaming service Discovery+. Wall Street had forecast earnings per share of 65 cents on revenue of $2.77 billion, according to a consensus estimate compiled by Yahoo Finance. A smaller compilation by Zacks was a penny lower on the EPS prediction, but concurred with the sales figure. Discovery actually reported diluted EPS of 21 cents on $2.792 billion in revenue. While the revenue was up 4%, the per-share earnings were down 62% (from 55 cents).

Tokyo-based Sony’s quarterly sales rose 27% from 1.7 trillion yen to 2.2 trillion yen ($20 billion). Sony had reported a January-March profit of 12.6 billion yen last year.

The robust first quarter advertising growth announced Tuesday provides the latest sign that advertisers are expecting the economy to roar back to life as more people get vaccinated against COVID-19 and burst out of their pandemic cocoons.

HBO Max and HBO have reached 44.2 million U.S. subscribers, AT&T revealed in its first-quarter 2021 earnings report Thursday. That’s up from the 41 million combined subs the company reported at the end of 2020, a tally that beat the company’s initial projection by two years.

Fremantle, the RTL-owned global production empire behind shows including American Idol, Too Hot To Handle and We Are Who We Are, suffered a 39% drop in earnings as the coronavirus pandemic wiped out TV shoots across the world.

The total of $50.5 million was the result of record political advertising and higher retrans dollars partially offset by lower local and national ad revenue.

The drop to $90 million came primarily from lower syndicated digital and movie revenue offset by increases in custom marketing solutions and Activation.

Comscore reported a fourth quarter loss as the company prepared to close a deal that promises to wipe out the measurement company’s debt. The company said it lost $13.2 million, or 18 cents a share, in the quarter, compared to a loss of $21.4 million, or 31 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue dropped to $90 million from $95.2 million a year ago.