Dish Network Corp, the second-largest U.S. satellite TV company after DirecTV, reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit and added fewer pay-TV subscribers than analysts had expected.
Dish has been looking to diversify beyond its core pay-TV business, which has matured and faces tough competition from cable, telecom and Internet video providers.
The company added 14,000 pay-TV subscribers on a net basis in the fourth quarter. Wall Street analysts were expecting net subscriber additions of 44,000 in the quarter, according to StreetAccount consensus data.
Profit fell to $209 million, or 46 cents per share, from $313 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.
Revenue dropped 1 percent to $3.59 billion.
Analysts on average expected earnings of 51 cents per share on revenue of $3.56 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Dish said on Friday that it was writing down the assets of its Blockbuster stores in the United Kingdom, resulting in a pretax charge of $46 million in 2012, according to a regulatory filing.
Last month, Dish made an offer of $3.30 per share for Clearwire Corp, which had already agreed to sell itself to majority-owner Sprint Nextel Corp for $2.97 per share.
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen told Reuters last month that he wants to get into the wireless broadband market, but it could take the company months to finalize its wireless plans because of some remaining regulatory issues and wireless market consolidation.
Dish's sister company EchoStar Corp's quarterly revenue fell to $786.2 million from $834 million a year ago.
