Dish Earnings Call Recap

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok I am dialed in and waiting for the Dish Earnings Call to start.

If I hear Charlie say that Dish's poor results for the quarter is due to the economy then I am going to scream (loudly too) as DirecTV is showing positive growth in the same economy. Charlie is not the economy, its your management team! (grr!)

Anyways I have that out of my system now for a bit...

Call should be starting soon.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Going straight into questions with no talk before hand.

 

[Juan]

What was D*'s gain for the third quarter? never mind it was 156k http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com...586-179420&type=sect&dcn=0001047469-08-011745

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Asking about TurboHD, it got them back into the HD game, but the satellite failure earlier in the year hurt them. Nothing about new HD channels.

 

[rad]

Asking about TurboHD, it got them back into the HD game, but the satellite failure earlier in the year hurt them. Nothing about new HD channels.

Which failure, there's been two this year?

 

[rad]

What was D*'s gain for the third quarter?

Net add of 156,000 for the 3rd at D*.

 

[mdonnelly]

Which failure, there's been two this year?

Two Dish launches failed?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie says Dish has pricing Power and costs less then others. (huh where?)

Question about Pricing Increase for 2009? Charlie says programming providers are increasing their rates and jumps through a bunch of hoops without saying that there will be a price increase in the new year.

 

[Laddyboy]

AMC 14. E2 didn't matter very much. All AMC14 primarily affected was HD LIL for the EA which has been mitigated with moving some older sats around so that's a poor excuse imho.

 

[uncrules]

Two Dish launches failed?

I believe rad was asking about the one launch failure and failure of satellite already in space.

 

[rad]

I believe rad was asking about the one launch failure and failure of satellite already in space.

Correct, AMC14 failed and Echo II was lost in space.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie talks about the satellite failure on 148. Moving those customers off of 148 and moving international customers off the wing slots. Charlie says the 148 satellite that is there now "may" be used somewhere else.

Migrations will happen through the first half of next year, but thats all the planned migration.

Charlie says it makes sense to start upgrading customers to MPEG4 receivers.

Question about the Tivo lawsuit.

Charlie says he is 0 for 3 in his predictions...

Charlie says they paid Tivo the money they owed them. How much more money do they owe them and did their design around work.

Charlie starts talking about how people are disconnecting and might be buying pirate satellite receivers (bullcrap charlie)

He then says other churn could be due to the fradulent retailers which you have seen in the news lately.

Charlie says he hopes the next generation of Smart Cards will work and wont be cracked. (Is this guy really the CEO?)

 

[Laddyboy]

Charlie talks about the satellite failure on 148. Moving those customers off of 148 and moving international customers off the wing slots. Charlie says the 148 satellite that is there now "may" be used somewhere else.

Migrations will happen through the first half of next year, but thats all the planned migration.

Charlie says it makes sense to start upgrading customers to MPEG4 receivers.

Question about the Tivo lawsuit.

Charlie says he is 0 for 3 in his predictions...

Charlie says they paid Tivo the money they owed them. How much more money do they owe them and did their design around work.

Charlie starts talking about how people are disconnecting and might be buying pirate satellite receivers (bullcrap charlie)

He then says other churn could be due to the fradulent retailers which you have seen in the news lately.

Charlie says he hopes the next generation of Smart Cards will work and wont be cracked. (Is this guy really the CEO?)

Wow. Is he smoking some good stuff or what? No wonder E* is in trouble with this kind of head burying and naive excuse-making. At this rate come February, expect to see even more migration from E* to elsewhere.

 

[mdonnelly]

Correct, AMC14 failed and Echo II was lost in space.

I see. Dish seems to think the impact of Echo-2 failing wasn't worth mentioning. They're probably right.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie does not get it that all of these Wall Street guys read SatelliteGuys and see whats going on. I don't know whats up with his smoke and mirrors that he is putting up.

Guy calls in from press and Charlie gets rid of him quickly saying that press can only participate in listen only mode.

Now a question about pirarcy and when did it become a problem and how will eastern arc help dish.

Charlie says that Pirarcy became an issues in early 2007 (spring) (Hey Charlie Dish Network has been pirated for years and years before then, what hole have you been living in?)

Charlie says they have another generation of security ready to go if this new security is broken.

Charlie says Eastern Arc is difficult to explain, then goes and explains it.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie says that the next satellite is scheduled to launch this year and should be online early next year.

 

[8bitbytes]

... Charlie says programming providers are increasing their rates...

Q: Are you raising rates in Feb 09?
A: The programming providers are, so....

Seems to answer that question for anyone who did not think they would.

 

[Poke]

Well the Cecil 2 post to go up sometime for the 129.

 

[pdxsam]

Charlie really is living and operating a business in some parallel universe to us.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Charlie says that consumers are not spending the money on HD so not much as a drive there on the HD product, but they will continue to heavily market it.

Charlie says nothing to report from Sling this year, he says they need to put it in one of Dish Networks set top boxes to make it work. He says that is not that easy to do, but they are working on it.. (Hey Charlie its called a 922)