Time Warner on Wednesday posted higher third-quarter profit, beating Wall Street estimates on growth in advertising and subscription fees at its cable networks.
Shares rose 2.7 percent to $70 in pre-market trading following the announcement. (Click here to track the company's shares following the report.)
Revenue at its cable unit, which includes Turner Broadcasting channels such as CNN as well as premium movie service HBO, increased 5 percent to $3.5 billion. Advertising was up 11 percent to $96 million.
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Revenues fell 7 percent to $2.7 billion at its Film and TV Entertainment unit that includes Warner Brothers. It blamed the decline partly on a tough comparison to a year ago, when it benefited from the strong box office for the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises."
Its Time publishing unit, which it plans to spin off next year, suffered a 2 percent fall in revenue. Time Warner said the spinoff of the unit will likely occur in second quarter of 2014.
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Net income for Time Warner was $1.18 billion, or $1.26 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, up from $822 million, or 84 cents a share, a year ago.
Adjusting for discontinued operations and other items, earnings per share were $1.01, which beat Wall Street estimates by 12 cents.
Revenue rose 0.2 percent to $6.86 billion. Analysts expected $6.94 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
—By Reuters