It is safe to say at this point that any company like Cablevision, Time Warner, or Comcast all have their work cut out for them moving forward if they want to maintain their performance down the road. What does that mean? Well, Cablevision announced their second quarter results for the year this week, and the results showed a continuing decline in virtually everything. Most notably, the results were a culmination of a 30% drop in subscriptions in the last 10 years.
Consolidated net profits increased slightly, by just 1.6%, but that doesn’t mean the outlook is necessarily bright for the company. That increase happened to be one of the only bright spots in the entire situation. Operating income decreased 4.5%, which was a serious drop-off for a company that had previously been expecting good performance on all fronts.
The company’s CEO James L. Dolan had some interesting comments on the quarter, and even was ambitious enough to call the second quarter performance “well” compared to other quarters. He released a statement pointing out that, “Cablevision continued to perform well in the second quarter, achieving growth in net revenue and revenue per customer.” Ironically enough, though, this is the success that comes with a major asterisk sitting next to it.
Cord cutters have mostly left because of increasing prices, decreasing flexibility, and a new mix of mediums that allow people to get their content from other places – like the Internet for example. He went on to point out that, “We will continue to focus on providing superior service and innovative products that will resonate with consumers.” This is something that will clearly have to be judged in the coming months and years – to determine how successful this mission becomes.
http://www.thehoopsnews.com/2015/08/01/7172/pot-industry-hits-another-roadblock-in-colorado/
However, Dolan did not universally carry an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward space in the long-term. He said additionally that, “I don’t think the sky is falling quite yet,” when asked about the future of traditional services that are not within the cord cutter’s space. Dolan went on to point out that it would take another five years to see a 10% customer-base decline, and then another ten years to see the 30% decline that has already been seen in the last few decades.
It will be interesting to see how Cablevision performs in the coming months, and even more interesting to see what happens to CEO’s like Dolan, as the money starts to slow down even further than it has to this point – and subscribers continue to drop off dramatically.
