Time Warner Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit, helped by higher subscription fees for channels offered by its Turner Broadcasting and Home Box Office businesses.
Shares of the company, which also raised its adjusted profit growth forecast for 2014, rose 3 percent in premarket trading.
Revenue from Turner Broadcasting, the operator of channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT, rose 4.6 percent in the third quarter, mainly due to price increases in the United States.
The unit accounted for more than one-third of the company’s total revenue.
Revenue from its Home Box Office unit, which runs the successful crime show “True Detective”, rose 10 percent and accounted for about 21 percent of Time Warner’s total revenue.
Time Warner said last month that HBO would launch a standalone online streaming service next year to make hit shows such as “Game of Thrones” available to people who do not subscribe to cable television.
The company, which rebuffed a takeover offer from Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox in August, raised its percentage growth forecast for full-year adjusted profit to high teens from low teens.
Time Warner based its forecast on 2013 adjusted earnings of $3.51 per share.
Analysts on average are expecting a profit of $4.01 per share for 2014, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Net income attributable to common shareholders fell to $967 million, or $1.11 per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $1.18 billion, or $1.26 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned $1.22 per share.
Total revenue rose 3.3 percent to $6.24 billion.
Analysts on average had expected a profit of 94 cents per share and revenue of $6.16 billion.
Time Warner’s shares closed at $74.97 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
REUTERS
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