• by Wayne Friedman , April 30, 2009

Showing few signs of a recessionary economy, Comcast Corp. first-quarter profit rose more than 5%, thanks to its growing triple play of products, as well as cutting back on capital spending.

Comcast, the largest U.S. cable television operator, said it earned $778 million compared with $738 million in the first quarter of 2008. Revenue rose to $8.84 billion from $8.39 billion -- a 5% rise. Analysts were expecting somewhat less, just $8.76 billion in revenue and about the same 2008 first-quarter net earnings.

In midday trading, the company's stock was up 3% to $15.71.

With its triple-play package -- digital TV, Internet, and phone -- Comcast showed gains. Twenty-four percent of its consumers now take all three products versus 18% in first-quarter 2008.

Comcast added 329,000 high-speed Internet customers in the quarter, up over estimates of 236,000 additions. Comcast said that 298,000 digital-telephone subscribers signed up during the first quarter. This was against 344,000 phone additions in the fourth quarter.

Basic cable consumer continued to decline, while digital consumers have grown. Basic cable customers fell by 78,000 in the latest three months; some estimates say the number of basic subscribers dropped by 233,000 in the quarter ended Dec. 31. Digital cable added 288,000 customers in the first quarter. Some 247,000 customers signed up for digital service in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Overall, video consumers are at 24.1 million versus 24.7 million -- a 2% slip.

In addition, the company's capital spending declined by 19% compared with the same quarter a year ago -- which some analysts called astonishing considering the historically higher capital spending among cable operators.

This is not to say that Comcast has not been hit with some bad news in terms of advertising dollars. Its local cable advertising revenue sank 25%, due to lower automotive, financial, and home-related businesses. The company doesn't expect much improvement in the coming months.

Comcast's cable programming networks -- Versus, E, Style, Golf Channel, G4 and AZN Television -- saw revenue decline 1% to $361 million, with advertising revenues down 8%. Overall, the cable network's operating cash flow was down 2% to $113 million during the period.

Comcast noted that its marketing expenses declined 8% recently, but expects it to grow in the coming months.