Dish Network beats Wall Street expectations in its quarterly performance report

Dish Network announced its quarterly performance results on Wednesday that came stronger than the Wall Street expectations. The company attributed the success to losing considerably lesser pay-TV subscribers than originally thought. Dish was previously struggling in keeping its pay-TV subscribers ascribed to a change in trend and a higher demand for online streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+.

In the fourth quarter, Dish announced to have lost 194,000 pay-TV subscribers that were reported remarkably fewer as compared to 334,000 subscribers that it lost in the same quarter last year. Dish’s pay-TV business includes Sling TV and satellite TV. The Sling TV component was declared to have lost 94,000 subscribers in the recent quarter versus 47,000 new subscriptions that were noted in 2018’s fourth quarter.

Dish Network To Become The Fourth-Largest U.S Wireless Carrier

Dish is currently waiting for Sprint and T-Mobile merger that received approval from a federal judge in the past week. Following the completion of T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint, Dish will get access to Sprint’s prepaid businesses and win the title of the 4^th largest U.S wireless carrier.

The aforementioned merger will introduce Dish Network as a major competitor in the niche of next-generation wireless telecommunication. Dish currently estimates a $10 billion cost associated with rolling out its 5G network (virtualized) that will put it in the list of competitors for the bigger fish like AT&T and Verizon Communications.

In fiscal 2020, the company was reported quoting a cost of $500 million to $1 billion committed to building its wireless carrier. By 2023, Dish expressed confidence that it will be offering the 5G services to around 70% of the total U.S population. In an event that it misses this deadline, however, the Federal Communications Commission will penalize it with a $2.2 billion fine.

Dish’s Figures Versus Analysts’ Estimates

Dish revealed its net income in the fourth quarter at $389 million on Wednesday versus a significantly lower $337 million in the past year. The company also said that it made 69 cents of earnings per share as compared to the analysts’ estimate of 59 cents per share. In 2018’s Q4, Dish’s EPS was capped at 64 cents per share.

On the revenue front, the company recorded $3.24 billion in the recent quarter that marked a 2.1% decline from $3.31 billion that was printed a year ago. According to Refinitiv, experts had forecast $3.15 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter for Dish Network.

At the time of writing, Dish is trading at around $41 per share in the stock market that translates to just over 15% gain in 2020 so far.