• by Wayne Friedman , January 26, 2012

More revenue from new digital residential customers helped Time Warner Cable witness big net income gains for the fourth quarter 2011.

Net income for the company was at $564 million for the quarter, with revenue up 4% to $5 billion. Total revenue from the company's residential businesses was up 2.6% to $4.3 billion. Total revenue for 2011 rose 4.3% to $19.7 billion.

Growth came from residential high-speed data revenues -- the number of subscribers and increases in average revenues per subscriber. Residential voice also climbed, but revenues had a slight decrease per subscriber.

The unexpected rise in its results push up the company's stock price over 7% in mid-day Thursday trading.

Overall digital phone, Internet and video customers continued to climb -- as its older analog basic cable customers went in the other direction.

The company also added 117,000 high-speed data residential customers and 37,000 phone subscribers, in line with analyst estimates. Time Warner's biggest number of customers added 5,000 -- 0.2% rise -- now totaling 2,628,000. The company lost about 129,000 basic video customers in the period, below the 141,000 analysts were expecting.

Time Warner says there was a decline in overall video subscribers and lower revenues from premium channels, as well as lower video-on-demand revenues.

Business services grew 37% to $409 million. At same time, local cable advertising sales slipped 10% to $242 million. For the year, Time Warner posted $880 million in advertising sales, at virtually the same level as in 2010.

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