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CBS posted $4.04 billion in quarterly revenue, narrowly beating the expectations of analysts on Wednesday and up 6 percent from a year earlier.
Net earnings were $443 million, up from $363 million a year before. On a per-share basis, CBS earned 71 cents, or 73 cents on a diluted per-share basis, up 24 percent from the same frame last year.
Diluted earnings per share jumped 24 percent to 73 cents.
CEO Leslie Moonves called it “the most successful quarter in our company’s history” by many economic metrics.
Analysts were looking for about $4.02 billion in revenue and about 68 cents a share in profit.
The stock was up more than 1 percent to $46.40 during the regular session Wednesday. After the release of the first-quarter financial data, the stock traded another 1 percent higher.
By segment, advertising, as usual, brought in the most revenue: $2.5 billion, up from $2.3 billion. Content licensing and distribution was good for $1 billion, which was just sightly ahead of a year earlier. Affiliate and subscriptions brought in $519 million, up from $455 million, and “other” was $58 million compared with $54 million.
“The value of our world-class content clearly continues to rise,” Moonves said. “In terms of big event television, we had tremendous success during the quarter with the Super Bowl, the Grammys, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and more recently, the Academy of Country Music Awards. And our primetime lineup continues to dominate as well.”
Moonves was scheduled to speak to Wall Street analysts later Wednesday.
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