Posts Tagged ‘DTV’

  • DirecTV Earns $1.55 Per Share
    , February 14th, 2013 at 9:59 am

    Great news this morning from DirecTV ($DTV). The satellite-TV company reported blow-out earnings. For Q4, DTV earned $1.55 per share which was up from $1.02 per share a year ago. Wall Street has been expecting $1.13 per share so this was a big beat.

    The key to DirecTV’s success is its business in Latin America. They’re growing very well there. DTV now has 10.3 million subscribers in that region which is up from 7.9 million one year ago. Last quarter, DirecTV added 658,000 customers in Latin America which was more than expected.

    DirecTV is still huge in the United States, but growth has slowed down as the market has matured. Last quarter, DTV added 103,000 subscribers in the U.S. to bring their total to 20.1 million. I was also pleased to see that the cancellation rate in the U.S. dropped from to 1.43% from 1.52% last year.

    The only negative is that DTV said its earnings will take a hit from the currency devaluation in Venezuela. The company also announced a $4 billion share buyback which is equivalent to about 13% of DTV’s market value. The shares have been up as much as 3.4% today. For all of 2012, DTV earned $4.58 per share.

  • DirecTV Misses By Four Cents Per Share
    , November 6th, 2012 at 10:38 am

    Election Day is finally here. I’m not in the business of trying to predict who will win, but I think the market will be very pleased to have the uncertainty behind us. The S&P 500 is back over 1,420 this morning but I don’t expect much price action this week.

    The weak spot on the Buy List today is DirecTV ($DTV). The satellite TV company missed earnings by four cents per share. For their Q3, DirecTV earned 90 cents per share compared with Wall Street’s consensus of 94 cents per share. The good news is that revenue rose 8.4% to $7.42 billion which was $110 million better than consensus.

    DirecTV added 543,000 net subscribers in Latin America, fewer than the 585,000 estimate from nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The disappointing results may indicate a deterioration in the region’s economies, especially Venezuela, said Chris Marangi, a portfolio manager at Gamco Investors Inc. whose funds own 7.4 million DirecTV shares.

    Latin American customer additions fell from 645,000 in the quarter ended in June. Last year, DirecTV reported 574,000 new Latin American users in the third quarter, an increase from the prior three-month period.

    DirecTV added 67,000 net U.S. customers, less than the 99,000 average analyst estimate. The company has tried to entice subscribers with National Football League Sunday Ticket promotions, which give new customers access to all Sunday football games for free for a year. DirecTV also lowered the price for Sunday Ticket for current customers.

    I also forgot to mention the good earnings report last Friday from Moog ($MOG-A). The company reported earnings 91 cents per share which was two cents better than estimates. Moog earned 83 cents per share for the same quarter one year ago.

    This was for their fiscal fourth quarter. For the entire year, Moog earned $3.33 per share which was a nice increase over the $2.95 per share they earned in the year before that. Moog reiterated its earnings forecast of $3.50 to $3.70 per share for the coming year. That’s a very good number.

    “Over the last three years, sales have increased 34% and earnings per share are up 68%,” said John Scannell, CEO. “We have delivered this improvement despite the reduced military spending and the tepid industrial recovery. We believe our diversity across markets and geographies, as well as our excellent position on the most important military and commercial programs has been the key to this strong performance and we’re confident these factors will continue to benefit us in 2013.”

    I think Moog is one of the cheaper stocks on our Buy List.

  • DirecTV Earns $1.09 Per Share
    , August 2nd, 2012 at 10:00 am

    DirecTV ($DTV) reported second-quarter earnings this morning of $1.09 per share, four cents below Wall Street’s forecast:

    DirecTV Group second-quarter earnings edged up as the satellite-TV provider added a record number of net subscribers in its Latin America business, which saw double-digit revenue growth.

    Latin America has become DirecTV’s main source of growth as its U.S. markets attract fewer new customers. The company this year said it set a new plan that aims to double its Latin America subscribers to more than 16 million and annual revenue to more than $10 billion over the next five years. The company said business is driven by greater middle market demand in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela.

    Net subscriber losses in DirecTV’s larger U.S. business totaled 52,000, from the 26,000 subscribers added a year earlier. Total subscriber base stood at 19.9 million at the end of the quarter, up slightly from 19.4 million a year ago.

    In Latin America, however, the company added a record 645,000 net subscribers in the latest quarter, up from 472,000 subscribers tacked on a year earlier. The company had a total of 9.1 million subscribers in the region by the end of the quarter, a 36% jump from the year earlier.

    DirecTV reported a profit of $711 million, or $1.09 a share, up from year-earlier profit of $701 million, or 91 cents a share. The latest quarter included a $43 million pre-tax non-cash loss from the revaluation of the U.S. dollar denominated liabilities in Brazil.

    Revenue increased 9.5% to $7.22 billion, driven by a roughly 20% revenue growth in Latin America. Analysts were looking for earnings of $1.14 a share on $7.21 billion in revenue, according to a poll conducted by Thomson Reuters.

    Operating margin widened to 19.5% from 18.6%.

    After gapping down this morning, the shares are currently down by a little over one percent.

  • Viacom and DirecTV Reach Deal
    , July 20th, 2012 at 12:32 pm

    From WSJ:

    Viacom Inc. and DirecTV settled a program-fee dispute early Friday morning, restoring Viacom channels like Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV to the satellite TV service’s 20 million subscribers after a nine day blackout.

    Precise financial details of the new seven-year agreement weren’t disclosed. But people familiar with the situation said Viacom won an increase of more than 20% in the fees paid by DirecTV, which previously had totaled around $500 million annually, raising the amount to above $600 million.

    That lifted the rate paid by DirecTV to near or in line with the prevailing market rate Viacom received from other distributors, analysts said. DirecTV had previously said that Viacom was asking for a 30% increase in fees, though Viacom said its existing agreement paid it below-market rates and it was just asking for a fair deal. In midmorning trading, Viacom shares were up three cents to $46.68 while DirecTV stock was down nine cents to $48.86.

  • DirecTV Close to Deal With Viacom
    , July 18th, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    I haven’t yet commented on the contretemps between DirecTV ($DTV) and Viacom because I didn’t see it lasting long. The short version of the story is that Viacom asked for a lot more money to carry their channels, and DTV said no.

    It’s not just DTV who’s getting squeezed. The Dish Network couldn’t reach an agreement with AMC. Interestingly, Time Warner Cable ($TWC) came to DTV’s defense. The bottom line is that there’s just too much money at stake for the sides not to come together. The only issue is price.

    The latest news is that they’re close to reaching a deal:

    DirecTV (DTV) is closer to restoring Viacom Inc. (VIAB)’s 26 channels, including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, as discussions between the two sides continue, according to the satellite-TV provider’s head of content.

    “There’s been progress,” Derek Chang, DirecTV’s executive vice president of content, strategy and development, said yesterday in a phone interview. “We’ve been getting closer. We would love to be done with this thing, but we have to do it in a way that we can protect our customers.”

  • CWS Market Review – May 11, 2012
    , May 11th, 2012 at 7:40 am

    The stock market finally broke out of its trading range this week. Unfortunately, it was to the downside. More troubles from Europe, including shake-up elections in France and Greece, helped the S&P 500 close Wednesday at its lowest level in nine weeks. However, the initial jobless claims report on Thursday helped us make up a little lost ground.

    In this week’s CWS Market Review, I’ll explain why everyone’s so freaked out (again) by events in Europe. I’ll also talk about the latest revelations from JPMorgan Chase ($JPM). The bank just told investors that it lost $2 effing billion on effing derivatives trades gone effing bad. I’ll have more to say on that in a bit. We also had more strong earnings reports from our Buy List stocks DirecTV ($DTV) and CA Technologies ($CA), and shares of CR Bard ($BCR) just hit a 10-month high.

    Greece Is Bad but the Real Story Is Spain

    But first, let’s get to Greece. Here’s the 411: The bailout deals reached by Greece required them to get their fiscal house in order. The problem is that no one asked the voters. Now they’ve been asked and the voters don’t like it at all. Actually, I understated that—they’re royally PO’d.

    Greece is massively in debt. They owe the equivalent of Switzerland’s entire GDP. Politically, everything has been upended. In Greece, there are two dominant political parties and both got creamed in the recent election. Seventy percent of Greeks voted for parties opposed to the bailouts. Mind you, the supposed beneficiaries of the bailout are the ones most opposed to them.

    Since there was no clear-cut winner in the election, folks are scrambling to build a governing coalition. This won’t be easy. Whatever they do come up with probably won’t last long and they’ll need new elections. As investors, we fortunately don’t need to worry about the minutia of Greek politics. The important aspect for us is that the Greek public wants to ditch the austerity measures into the Aegean, but that means giving up all that euro cash that was promised them.

    My take is that the bigwigs in Greece will do their best to stay in the euro but try to get the bailout terms renegotiated. That puts the ball in Europe’s court, and by Europe, I mean Germany. Too many people have invested too much to see the European project go down in flames. I think the Europeans will ultimately make some concessions in order to keep the euro going. If one country leaves the euro, it sets a precedent for others to leave—and that could start a flood.

    As bad of a shape as Greece is in, they’re small potatoes (olives?). The real story is what’s happening in Spain. For the fourth time, the country is trying to convince investors that its screwed-up banks aren’t screwed-up. The problem is that Spanish banks are loaded down with toxic real estate debt.

    The Spanish government is trying to prop up the banks, but it may delay the problem rather than solve it. It just took control of Bankia which itself was formed when the government forced some smaller banks together in an effort to save them. What’s most troubling about the problems in Spain is that the future is so cloudy. I really can’t say what will happen. Nouriel Roubini said that Spain will need an external bailout. If so, that may lead to a replay of what we’re seeing in Greece, except it would be much, much larger.

    The immediate impact of the nervousness from Europe is that it spooked our markets. On May 1st, the Dow got to its highest point since 2007. The index then fell for six straight days which was its longest losing streak since August. But here’s the key: not all stocks are falling in the same manner.

    Investors have been rushing away from cyclical sectors and towards defensive sectors. For example, the Utilities Sector ETF ($XLU) closed slightly higher on Thursday than it did on May 1st. Low-risk bonds are also doing well. Two months ago, the 30-year Treasury nearly broke above 3.5%. This past week, it dipped below 3%. On Thursday, Uncle Sam auctioned off $16 billion in 30-year bonds and it drew the heaviest bidding in months.

    The trend towards defensive stocks is holding back some of our favorite cyclical stocks like Ford ($F), Moog ($MOG-A) and AFLAC ($AFL). Let me assure investors that these stocks are very good buys right now and I expect them to rally once the skies clear up.

    JPMorgan Chase Reveals Huge Trading Losses

    Now let’s turn to some recent news about our Buy List stocks. The big news came after Thursday’s closing bell when JPMorgan Chase ($JPM) announced a special conference call. CEO Jamie Dimon told investors that the bank took $2 billion in trading losses in derivatives and that it could take another $1 billion this quarter. Jamie, WTF?

    For his part, Dimon was clear that the bank messed up. This is very embarrassing for JPM and frankly, I don’t expect this type of mismanagement from them. The stock will take a big hit from this news, but it doesn’t change my positive outlook for the bank. (Matt Levine at Dealbreaker has the best explanation of the losses: “This was not driven by the market moving against them (though it seems to have); it was driven by them getting the math wrong”).

    As ugly as this is, it’s not a reflection of JPM’s core business operations. Sure, it’s terrible risk-management. But as far as banking goes, JPM is in good shape. Don’t be concerned that JPM faces a similar fate as the banks in Spain. They don’t. In fact, most banks in the U.S. are pretty safe right now. Warren Buffett recently contrasted U.S. banks with European banks when he said that our banks have “liquidity coming out of their ears.” He’s right. JPMorgan Chase remains a very good buy up to $50 per share.

    Bed Bath & Beyond ($BBBY) surprised us this week by buying Cost Plus ($CPWM) for a half billion dollars. The deal is all-cash which is what I like to hear. The best option for any company is to pay for an acquisition without incurring new debt.

    BBBY said they expect the deal to be slightly accretive. That means that BBBY is “buying” CPWM’s earnings at a price less than the going rate for BBBY’s earnings. As a result, the deal will show a net increase to BBBY’s bottom line for this year. The press release also said: “Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. continues to model a high single digit to a low double digit percentage increase in net earnings per diluted share in fiscal 2012.” I’m keeping my buy price at $75.

    Now let’s look at some earnings. On Monday, Sysco ($SYY) had a decent earnings report although the CEO said the results “fell short of our expectations.” Sysco is a perfect example of a defensive stock since the food service industry isn’t adversely impacted by a downturn in the business cycle. The key with investing in Sysco is the rich dividend. The company has increased their payout for 42 years in a row, and I think we’ll get #43 later this year, although it will be a small increase. Going by Thursday’s close, Sysco yields 3.87%. Sysco is a good buy up to $30.

    DirecTV ($DTV) reported Q1 earnings of $1.07 per share. That’s a nice jump over the 85 cents per share they earned a year ago. DirecTV’s sales rose 12% to $7.05 billion which was $10 million more than consensus. The company has done well in North America, but they see their future lying in Latin America. DTV added 81,000 subscribers in the U.S. last quarter. In Latin America, they added 593,000. Yet there are more than twice as many current subscribers in the U.S. as there are in Latin America. Last year, revenue from Latin America revenue grew by 42%.

    DirecTV has projected earnings of $4 per share for this year and $5 for 2013. This earnings report tells me they should have little trouble hitting those goals. The shares are currently going for less than 11 times this year’s earnings estimate. They’re buying back stock at the rate of $100 million per week. DirecTV is a solid buy below $48 per share.

    On Thursday, CA Technologies ($CA) reported fiscal Q4 earnings of 56 cents per share. That’s a good result and it was four cents better than Wall Street’s estimates. For the year, CA made $2.27 per share which is a nice increase over the $1.92 from last year. For fiscal 2013, CA sees revenues ranging between $4.85 billion and $4.95 billion and earnings-per-share ranging between $2.45 and $2.53. I’m impressed with that forecast, but Wall Street had been expecting revenues of $5 billion and earnings of $2.50 per share. The stock was down in the after-hours market on Thursday, but I don’t expect any weakness to last. CA is going for less than 11 times the low-end of their forecast.

    A quick note on Oracle ($ORCL): The stock took a hit this week on the news of Cisco’s ($CSCO) lousy outlook. Oracle is also in the middle of a complicated intellectual property trial with Google ($GOOG). I doubt the trial will go Oracle’s way, but the dollar amounts involved are pretty small compared with the size of these two firms. On Thursday, Oracle fell below $27 for the first time since January. That’s a very good price. The stock is a good buy up to $32.

    That’s all for now. Wall Street will be focused on Facebook’s massive IPO scheduled for next Friday. The stock might fetch 99 times earnings. I’m steering clear of this one. Be sure to keep checking the blog for daily updates. I’ll have more market analysis for you in the next issue of CWS Market Review!

    – Eddy

  • DirecTV Earns $1.07 Per Share
    , May 8th, 2012 at 10:20 am

    DirecTV ($DTV) reported first-quarter earnings of $1.07 per share. That beat Wall Street’s consensus by either one or two cents, depending on the source. A year ago, DTV earned just 85 cents per share.

    DirecTV’s sales rose 12% to $7.05 billion which was $10 million more than consensus. The company has done well in North America, but they see their future lying in Latin America.

    Put it this way: DTV added 81,000 subscribers in the U.S. last quarter. In Latin America, they aded 593,000. Yet there are more than twice as many current subscribers in the U.S. as there are in Latin America.

    The problem is that it costs more to get a subscriber in Latin America, so that hurts DTV’s margins. This was a good quarter for DTV. The stock is off some because it wasn’t the kind of blowout quarter that we’ve seen.

    The company said that it plans to make $4 per share this year and $5 next year. I think they can surpass those marks with ease.

  • “DirecTV Simply Looks Too Cheap”
    , April 10th, 2012 at 8:03 am

    Bloomberg has an interesting article today on one of our Buy List favorites, DirecTV ($DTV). The article highlights two importact facts about DTV.

    One is how well the company is doing in Latin America (“It’s not hard to envision a day when Latin America is perceived to be the core of DirecTV, and where the U.S. is an afterthought”).

    The other is the enormous cash flow the company generates. They’re buying back $100 million of their shares per week.

  • DirecTV Ad with Kate Upton
    , April 4th, 2012 at 11:05 am

    Here’s Kate Upton in a bikini. In an ad for DirecTV ($DTV). Which is on our Buy List. Therefore, this is relevant stock information.

  • After Market Updates
    , February 21st, 2012 at 9:54 pm

    Ultimately, the stock market gave back some of its gains this afternoon. The S&P 500 closed at 1,362.21 which was just shy of the post-crash high close of 1,363.61 from May 2nd of last year.

    Today’s market was split between large-cap stocks which fared the best and small-cap stocks which fared the worst. The small-cap Russell 2000 was down 0.66% today while the S&P 500 was up 0.98 points or 0.07%. The mega-cap S&P 100 was up 0.27%.

    Interestingly, shares of Apple ($AAPL) gained $12.73 or 2.54%. That’s a market cap gain of $11.87 billion. Each point in the S&P 500 is worth $9.05 billion. That means that Apple’s gain was worth 1.31 points in the S&P 500. The index gained 0.98 points so without Apple, the index would have closed just slightly lower today.

    In Buy List news, Johnson & Johnson‘s ($JNJ) CEO resigned:

    William C. Weldon, who presided over Johnson & Johnson during one of the most tumultuous periods in its history, will step down as chief executive in April, the company announced Tuesday.

    Alex Gorsky, head of the medical device and diagnostics business, will take over as chief executive. Mr. Weldon will remain as chairman.

    The news of Mr. Weldon’s retirement comes as Johnson & Johnson has struggled to emerge from a swarm of product recalls, manufacturing lapses and government inquiries that tarnished the name of a company that was once one of the nation’s most trusted household brands. In 2010, the company recalled millions of bottles of liquid children’s Tylenol and other medications, as well as tens of thousands of artificial hips and millions of contact lenses.

    Much of the blame for Johnson & Johnson’s stumbles fell on Mr. Weldon, the son of a Broadway stagehand and seamstress who became chief executive in 2002 after spending his entire career at the company. Critics said the company’s once-vaunted attention to quality slipped under his watch. The company said in a statement that neither Mr. Weldon nor Mr. Gorsky was available for comment.

    Oracle ($ORCL) was downgraded by JMP Securities. They’re paring back their earnings estimates but they add that the stock is not unreasonably valued.

    WSJ‘s “Market Beat” notes that DirecTV ($DTV) may soon join the streaming bandwagon.