CBS CBS Corp

By Tess Stynes and Joe Flint 

CBS Corp. said its first quarter earnings rose 20% as ad sales were boosted by the broadcast of Super Bowl 50 and revenue from TV station-carriage deals grew sharply.

For the quarter, CBS reported a profit of $473 million, or $1.02 a share, up from $394 million, or 78 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue increased 10% to $3.85 billion.

On an earnings call, CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said the company is "salivating" as it heads into "upfront season" when the television networks sell the majority of their advertising inventory for the coming 2015-16 television season.

In the past few years, demand at the upfront marketplace was soft across the industry -- amid concerns over viewership fragmentation, low ratings and cord-cutting -- and some marketers began to shift money from TV into digital outlets.

"Clearly there is a shift in dollars coming back to network television," Mr. Moonves said.

Shares rose 2.8% to $55.57 in recent after-hours trading.

While much of CBS's revenue growth was driven by airing Super Bowl 50 and three additional National Football League games, even without football the network still had a 12% jump in advertising dollars. Revenue from the company's entertainment segment -- which includes the broadcast network, CBS Television studios and CBS films -- rose 14% to $2.59 billion.

"We're having this remarkable success at exactly the right time," Mr. Moonves said.

Local broadcasting revenue grew 8.9% to $649 million thanks to political spending on CBS-owned television stations.

Besides advertising, CBS also made gains in fees from its affiliate television stations and pay-TV distributors who pay to carry its programming. Affiliate and subscription fee revenues grew 15% to $722 million.

One weak spot was content-licensing and distribution revenue, which fell 29%. The company attributed the decline to the timing of domestic and international television licensing sales.

Cable revenue, which includes contributions from Showtime, CBS Sports Network and Smithsonian Networks, decreased 2.6% to $525 million from the year-earlier period, which included a benefit from a multiyear licensing deal with Bell Media in Canada.

CBS will unveil its new fall schedule to advertisers in two weeks. The network isn't expected to add many new shows to its already-solid lineup that is expected to finish first in total viewers and key demographics.

The network ordered only 16 comedy and drama pilots -- in 15 of them it has partial or total ownership. Owning shows is important for CBS and other media companies because of revenue from reruns and international sales.

CBS offered a few more details on its plans to split off its radio unit into a separate publicly traded company. The company said it would likely file a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June or July. While the spinoff is the favored option, a sale of the radio stations hasn't been ruled out.

Write to Tess Stynes at tess.stynes@wsj.com and Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 03, 2016 19:13 ET (23:13 GMT)

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