Comcast and CBS Post Strong Results, Aided by Web

Comcast reported that its earnings rose to $1.7 billion from $1.35 billion, or to 65 cents a share from 50 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. The results surpassed analysts’ already sunny earnings projections of 63 cents a share.

Comcast’s strong quarter was spurred by its broadband Internet business and by a rebound, albeit a tepid one, of the NBC broadcast network. This was the first quarter in which Comcast owned 100 percent of NBCUniversal, the network’s corporate parent; it had previously held a 51 percent stake.

The earnings release was celebrated by Wall Street on Wednesday morning, sending Comcast’s stock up more than 5 percent. It closed at $45.08, almost achieving a record high.

After the closing bell, Comcast was joined by the CBS Corporation, the owner of the CBS broadcast network, which reported its highest quarterly profits ever. Earnings there rose to $472 million, or 76 cents a share, from $427 million, or 65 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

“Double-digit revenue growth — and the best quarterly profits we’ve ever had — add up to a phenomenal quarter for CBS,” the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, said in a statement. On a Wednesday afternoon conference call, the company’s executive chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, who comes up with new ways to praise Mr. Moonves to investors seemingly every quarter, used the term “supergenius.”

CBS’s performance was attributed in part to content licensing deals with online streaming services like Amazon, which has been running repeats of the network’s newest program “Under the Dome” this summer. The company, which has historically depended more on advertising revenue than its peers have, said it had a 22 percent increase in revenue from content licensing and distribution; Mr. Moonves’s statement mentioned that “our non-advertising revenue sources are having a bigger impact on our results all the time.”

The healthy results from both companies may augur more good news when other networks report in the weeks to come.

At Comcast, revenue for the NBCUniversal division — which includes the NBC network, a wide array of cable channels, a movie studio and other assets — was up 8.9 percent year-over-year, to almost $6 billion. Michael McCormack, a media analyst for Nomura, said in a note to investors that NBCUniversal’s performance exceeded expectations, “with filmed entertainment and broadcast television revenue offsetting weaker-than-expected theme parks revenue.”

NBC’s cable channels, including USA, Syfy and Bravo, posted a 7.7 percent increase in revenue, to $2.41 billion in the quarter. Its somewhat smaller broadcast business, which has been undergoing a reorganization, had a 11.6 percent increase, to $1.73 billion. Mr. McCormack attributed the broadcast unit’s gains to “better ratings and higher retransmission consent fees.”

Comcast executives specifically credited “The Voice,” the singing competition on NBC that has given the network some much-needed momentum.

Distribution, not content, remains the biggest part of Comcast’s business. Revenue for the distribution business, called Comcast Cable, was up 5.8 percent year-over-year, to about $10.5 billion, partly because it added 187,000 broadband subscribers in the second quarter.

Comcast has been losing television subscribers to DirecTV and Verizon FiOS for years, and it lost another 159,000 in the second quarter. But the rate of loss has slowed lately, a point the company emphasized again on Wednesday. The company squeezed a 2.7 percent revenue gain from its TV business, largely through rate increases and from subscribers who chose more expensive packages.

“Cable had outstanding growth, particularly in high-speed Internet, and NBCUniversal had strong performance across all of its businesses,” Brian L. Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, said in a statement.

Verizon Reports 23% Profit Gain, Aided by Wireless Expansion

A surge in wireless subscribers and smartphone sales, combined with more subscribers to its digital TV and Internet services, propelled the company to a profit of $2.25 billion in the second quarter, up 23 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Verizon, which is based in New York, said investment in its fourth-generation wireless network, called LTE, helped its growth. For its wireless business, the company added 941,000 contract subscribers, the most valuable type of customer.

The company also reported improved smartphone sales, partly on the back of demand for the iPhone. In the quarter, Verizon sold 7.5 million smartphones, including 3.9 million iPhones. In the year-ago quarter it sold 5.9 million smartphones, including 2.7 million iPhones.

Like other wireless carriers, though, Verizon appears to be keeping an eye on industry data showing that fewer people are upgrading to new smartphones year after year. To combat that trend, two of its top competitors, AT&T and T-Mobile USA, recently announced plans that would make it cheaper for customers to upgrade their phones before the typical two-year wait.

On Thursday, Verizon, the No. 1 wireless carrier, announced a similar plan. Verizon’s program, called Edge, will allow customers to pick the phone they want and then sign up for a monthly payment plan. The full price of the phone will be spread over 24 months. The customer can upgrade in as little as six months by paying off 50 percent of the original phone by then.

“Our customers have been asking for another option,” said Francis J. Shammo, Verizon’s chief financial officer, on the company’s earnings call. He said some people did not want to wait two years before buying a new smartphone.

But Verizon’s early-upgrade plan appears likely to attract only a small portion of the market, the high-spenders who must have the latest and greatest smartphones. Craig Moffett, an analyst at Moffett Research, said that plan was unlikely to add much to the company’s profits. But Verizon’s move, he said, shows that it is reacting to T-Mobile, the fourth-largest American carrier, which was the first carrier to introduce early-upgrade plans.

“I think T-Mobile’s plan is taking share, and they have to do something about it,” he said.

Over all, Verizon’s revenue rose 4.3 percent, to $29.8 billion, compared with the same quarter a year ago. The company’s net income was 78 cents a share, compared with 64 cents a share in the period a year ago. After excluding a one-time gain related to pension benefits, Verizon’s net income was 73 cents a share, beating analyst expectations of 72 cents, according to data from Thomson Reuters. Shares of the company were down 1.5 percent to close at $49.97 on Thursday.

Verizon is planning to invest even more money in the 4G network. It said it would increase capital spending this year to between $16.4 billion and $16.6 billion, an increase from its original plan to spend $16.2 billion.

The company also said that it added 161,000 subscribers to its Internet service and 140,000 to its video service. Verizon’s Internet service now has 5.8 million subscribers and its video service has 5 million.

DealBook: UBS Aided Purchase of Stake in Chinese Insurer

Aly Song/ReutersA worker cleans the windows of a building in front of the Ping An Insurance building in Shanghai.

SHANGHAI — The Swiss banking giant UBS made a $5.5 billion loan early this year to help a Thai company acquire a 15.6 percent stake in China’s Ping An Insurance Group, according to people briefed on the deal.

The loan helps explain how the Charoen Pokphand Group, an agribusiness giant based in Thailand, was able to complete one of the biggest deals ever in China, a $9.4 billion acquisition of shares in Ping An. The stake had long been held by the British bank HSBC, which had decided to sell to streamline its businesses.

The loan was crucial, people briefed on the transaction said, because it helped salvage a deal after several media outlets in China reported that the state-run China Development Bank withdrew financing from the Charoen Pokphand Group, also known as the CP Group, shortly before the regulatory deadline early this year.

UBS declined to comment on the loan, the details of which were disclosed earlier by Reuters.

But the people briefed on the deal said UBS had advised the CP Group on its acquisition of Ping An shares, and expected to earn about $100 million for its role in the transaction. These disclosures resolved a mystery of how the CP Group’s stake in Ping An was acquired without loans from the Chinese bank.

Executives at the privately held CP Group, controlled by the Thai billionaire Dhanin Chearavanont, could not be reached for comment. Spokesmen for HSBC and Ping An were also unavailable for comment Friday.

But a person who advised the CP Group said that the company had fully complied with regulations set by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, which approved the deal.

The deal for Ping An stock was closely followed in Asia after one of China’s leading business publications, Caixin, reported that the CP deal was being financed in part by Chinese investors, Ping An managers and Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand.

Analysts consider Ping An one of the best-run Chinese financial firms, with major banking and insurance divisions.

The company was founded in Shenzhen in 1988, and got a lift from Chinese regulators in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

After Ping An’s initial public offering in 2004, the relatives of Wen Jiabao, the former Chinese prime minister, acquired a secret, indirect stake in the company, a stake that at one time was valued at $2.7 billion. Relatives of China’s former Central Bank chief, Dai Xianglong, also acquired an indirect stake in Ping An during the same time.

Mark Scott reported from London.