Dish serves up dismal subscriber news for Q1
Details
Michelle Clancy
| 04 May 2019

US satellite TV provider Dish Network saw 259,000 net subscribers walk away in the first quarter.

The satcaster’s losses are accelerating too: That number is nearly three times the 94,000 customers it shed in the year-ago quarter.

Broken down by segment, Dish lost around 266,000 satellite TV customers – more than the loss of 185,000 a year ago. But the main story is the fact that it added just 7,000 customers for its Sling TV skinny TV service in the quarter – a significant drop-off from the gain of 91,000 subscribers that Sling TV added in the prior year.

In all, Dish had 9.639m DISH TV subscribers and 2.424m Sling TV subscribers at the end of the quarter.

Its earnings were down too: Revenue declined by 7.8% to $3.19 billion; profit also dipped 7.6% to $340 million or 65 cents per share, down from $368 million and 70 cents per share in the previous year.