Stocks/Earnings

U-verse continues to buoy AT&T’s consumer wireline unit -- with the telco adding 192,000 TV and 609,000 U-verse Internet customers in the fourth quarter of 2012 -- as revenue from the IP-based services offset its ongoing DSL and voice line losses.

Verizon Communications’ fourth quarter 2012 earnings were hurt by $319 million in costs related to Superstorm Sandy -- as well as pension, benefit and debt-retirement charges -- while the telco still managed to add 144,000 net new FiOS Internet and 134,000 net new FiOS TV subscribers.

As of Dec. 31, Verizon had a total of 5.42 million FiOS Internet and 4.73 million FiOS TV connections representing year-over-year increases of 12.6% and 13.3%, respectively.

So far, it looks like 2012 was a good year to be a cable investor — a very good year.

Cable stocks across the board had one of their best years in a long while in 2012, with MSOs up 41%, programmers up a strong 38% and satellite-TV service providers up 23% through Dec. 18. Barring a precipitous fall in the last two weeks of the year, cable could end up having its best year since 2009, when MSO stocks rose in the 40% range.

The new deal runs through 2017, the company said.

Bewkes was named chairman and CEO in 2009. He has overseen the spinoffs of Time Warner Cable and AOL into separate companies, leaving Time Warner to function as a content company operating in the TV, motion picture and publishing business.

The third-quarter earnings season came to a close last week, and analysts were mixed in their interpretations of the results, with some seeing a lack of pricing power for the MSOs and others finding a silver lining in cable’s continued broadband dominance and the promise of new fees.

Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems and Charter Communications all reported third-quarter results last week. TWC kicked off the week by missing average monthly revenue per unit (ARPU) targets and reporting higher than expected capital expenditures.