Profit More Than Doubles at CBS

NEW YORK: Announcing Q2 revenues at CBS Corporation of $3.59 billion and a net profit that more than doubled to $395 million, Leslie Moonves, president and CEO, said the results "demonstrate the power of the strategic actions we’ve taken to strengthen our business model."

“We delivered stellar growth across every single key financial metric, nearing record levels in all profit measures," Moonves continued. "These remarkable results reflect our increasing ability to monetize our content, while at the same time, diversifying and de-risking our company for the future, including recent new licensing deals with leading online video distributors. In addition, we led the marketplace in another highly successful Upfront selling season, setting us up for strong advertising growth next year. Meanwhile, we continue to generate very healthy free cash flow and return an increasing amount of value to our shareholders through our ongoing share repurchase program and recently increased dividend. Going forward, positive trends and new developments in our industry position us to deliver strong results not only for the balance of the year, but in 2012 and beyond as well.”

Revenues were up by 8 percent on the year-ago period to $3.59 billion, with a 21-percent growth in content licensing and distribution revenues to $889 million—driven in part by new digital content streaming deals—and a 12-percent rise in affiliate and subscription fee revenues to $426 million. Advertising revenues were up just 3 percent to $2.2 billion.

In the Entertainment segment (encompassing CBS Television Network, CBS Television Studios, CBS Studios International, CBS Television Distribution, CBS Films and CBS Interactive), revenues gained 10 percent to $1.84 billion, while the Cable Networks reported a 12-percent revenue increase to $413 million.