• by Wayne Friedman , February 21, 2014

In the face of growing pay TV competition, Dish Network posted better-than-expected net income for its fourth-quarter period ending Dec. 31.

Net income grew 38% to $288 million, or 63 cents a share. Revenue climbed nearly 7% to $3.54 billion. Analysts were expecting earnings of 41 cents a share and revenue of $3.59 billion.

Dish benefited by better comparisons to the year-ago quarterly period, where it had a loss of $25 million from discontinued operations, compared with a loss of $7.1 million in the most recent period.

The company’s pay TV subscribers barely grew to nearly 14.06 million pay-TV subscribers -- a net gain of 1,000 pay-TV subscribers. A year ago, it had a net gain of 89,000 pay TV-subscribers.

Dish was able to increase the amount of business from each pay TV subscriber 4.4% -- with the average monthly revenue per subscriber at $80.37 during 2013. A year ago it was $76.98.

Better results came from its newer broadband business -- an area it has been pushing to compete with other cable and TV providers who provide a variety of products -- video, broadband and phone -- to customers.

Dish added 80,000 net broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter, versus additions of 57,000 versus the same period a year ago. The broadband subscriber base was at 436,000 at the end of 2013, versus 183,000 at the end of 2012.

Midday trading of Dish Network stock was up 1.5% to $57.92.