Game of Thrones, other HBO shows boost Time Warner results
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- August 6, 2014
(Reuters) Time Warner Inc reported a 3 percent jump in quarterly revenue, helped by the popularity of “Game of Thrones” and other shows on its HBO network.
Time Warner shares were down 13 percent before the bell on Wednesday, a day after Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox abandoned an $80 billion bid for the company.
Revenue from Time Warner’s Home Box Office (HBO) unit rose 17 percent to $1.42 billion for the second quarter.
The company said the fourth season of “Game of Thrones,” which ended in June, was the most watched season of an original series in HBO’s history. The Emmy award-winning fantasy epic had an average gross audience of 19 million viewers.
The company’s Turner Networks unit home to CNN, TBS, and TNT also posted an increase in revenue, helped by higher subscription and advertisement sales.
Net income from continuing operations attributable to Time Warner common shareholders rose to $843 million, or 94 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30 from $698 million, or 73 cents per share, a year earlier.
On an adjusted basis the company earned 98 cents per share.
Revenue increased to $6.79 billion from $6.61 billion.
Analysts on average had expected a profit of 84 cents per share on revenue of $6.87 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company, which also owns the Warner Bros. movie studio, forecast full-year 2014 adjusted profit growth in the low teens in terms of percentage, off a base of 2013 adjusted earnings of $3.51 per share.
Time Warner said in April that it expected its full-year adjusted profit to grow in the low- to mid-teen percentage range, or better, for at least the next three or four years.
Shares of the company, which spun off its magazine company Time Inc this quarter, closed at $85.19 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
(Reporting By Aurindom Mukherjee and Lehar Maan in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Robin Paxton)
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