Time Warner Cable OK with going solo

‘We feel great about the spot we’re in,’ CEO says after failed Comcast takeover.

For Time Warner Cable, old school is new again.

The cable giant released its first-quarter profit report Thursday — just a week after its $45-billion takeover bid by Comcast Corp. collapsed under mounting pressure in Washington from federal regulators.

Wall Street analysts who were wondering whether Time Warner Cable Inc. was poised to quickly strike another deal, perhaps this time with Charter Communications Inc., didn’t get clarification during an early morning conference call.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Robert D. Marcus reportedly is meeting with his counterpart at Charter next week to discuss options. But on Thursday, Marcus said the company would not comment on such talks.

He also indicated his company was fine flying solo right now.

“We feel great about the spot we are in.... We are about as well positioned for the future as any company in our industry,” Marcus said on a conference call. “We are a far stronger company than we were just five short quarters ago.”

Five quarters ago the company was on the ropes, a beleaguered takeover target after a bruising 18 months that saw an exodus of subscribers. Charter was circling, and Time Warner Cable reached out to Comcast as a preferred suitor as the industry prepared for a wave of consolidation.

“Today’s report will likely leave investors guessing,” Craig Moffett of research firm MoffettNathanson wrote in a report. “With no counter-bidder in Comcast to help them negotiate a better deal this time, TWC’s best leverage is a legitimate willingness to say ‘no.’”

For the quarter that ended March 31, Time Warner Cable said its profit was down 4.4% to $458 million, or $1.59 a share, compared with $479 million, or $1.70 a share, a year earlier.

Analysts had anticipated earnings of $1.87 a share.

But there was plenty of good news. Revenue grew 3.5% to $5.8 billion.

The company celebrated its best first quarter ever in terms of subscriber growth by adding 30,000 new cable TV subscribers — its best result in five years.

It signed up 315,000 residential high-speed Internet customers and added 320,000 land-line phone customers. Overall, the company had its best quarter ever with an addition of 205,000 new customer relations.

“Our performance is improving against all competitors,” Marcus said. “Our connects are up, and our disconnects are down.”

The company’s firstquarter report “seems to make a case for TWC staying independent, at least for a while, while they reap the benefits of this newfound growth,” Moffett said.

Time Warner Cable has been spending heavily to improve Internet speeds and the reliability of its network. The company downplayed another trend: the popularity of so-called “skinny” bundles of cable TV channels that some of its competitors, including Dish Network and Verizon Communications Inc., have embraced.

Time Warner Cable will not be a pioneer in that realm, company executives said. If other firms have success with skinny bundles that offer a smaller number of channels, then TWC will adopt the practice.

For now, Time Warner Cable said it was content to watch those moves play out.

Time Warner Cable’s earnings continue to be pinched by the Dodgers channel debacle in Los Angeles.

The cable company is losing more than $100 million a year on its contract with team owner Guggenheim Baseball Management, and those losses prompted the company to reduce its fullyear earnings estimates.

“We do not have a Dodgers deal [with other pay-TV providers] at this point, and that certainly has an impact,” Chief Financial Officer Arthur T. Minson Jr. said.