Echostar profits rise on tax gain, not HD offerings
Echostar, the parent company of Dish Network, announced positive earnings yesterday.
The company reported net income of $855.5 million, or $1.79 per share. The majority of the earnings came from a $593 million one-time tax gain. Subscriber growth was down 33% as well from the prior year period. Echostar added 225,000 customers in comparison to the 340,000 added in last year's second quarter.
I did miss the noon conference call yesterday, but I'm surprised there aren't any numbers around the different content packages that the company offers. Specifically, where are the revenue numbers from the recent addition of the VOOM HD channels?
If you recall, VOOM shut down their HD services earlier this year and Echostar picked the channels up. Dish now offers ten of the VOOM HD channels for an additional $5 per month. Not mentioning the HD impact tells me there was none; or worse,
there was a negative impact.