Dish Earnings Call Recap

I was also surprised he said HD was not a driving force, maybe not for those that lost their homes. But DirecTV just gave all the credit to HD and DVR for their continued sub growth.

E* did add 875,000 new subs, not bad but it was the churn that was killing them, and I think a lot of it had to do with not focusing on keeping the subs who wanted HD and DVR.

Am I reading this right? If they had 875K new subs and ended up with a net loss of 25K does that mean 900K dropped the service this past quarter?
 
Am I reading this right? If they had 875K new subs and ended up with a net loss of 25K does that mean 900K dropped the service this past quarter?
That means 885,000 customers dropped service this quarter!

And anyone who stands in front of Dish customers knows why. On at least half the jobs I went to the customer was very unhappy with Customer Service, and complained about it endlessly. Most talk about being on the phone for over an hour (or several hours) to get things done. Why this is, I am not in a position to know, but it's what they say and it is very discouraging.


Furthermore I know that one major reason D* has shot so far ahead is that E* punishes their retailers harshly. If a customer cancels within the first year the dealer gets a chargeback for the full amount they earned AND they get a chargeback for the cost of the installation! Even though the customer is charged the early cancellation fee. Can't survive like this.

Furthermore, if a tech gets a recall (no matter what the reason), he gets a chargeback for the full amount he earned on the call, plus a fine for the same amount, plus he has to go back out and fix it for free, while making no money on another call he could be doing! That's a 400% chargeback for recalls, no matter what the reason. In my experience 80% of the time recalls are not the tech's fault; the customer changed their mind about location, or there was an equipment failure, or a problem with something the tech had not worked on, an intermittent, etc. Indiscriminate. I couldn't pay my rent on time this month because of this.

So it's a combination of economizing on customer service, chasing off good retailers with an untenable structure, and running off good techs.

Very discouraging. I've quit.
 
It's already been cracked. (oops?) And "ready to go" I'm just not touching...

I'm skeptical that Nagra 3 has been cracked, because Bell is (almost?) completely converted now and the pirates are complaining.

But I'm also skeptical that Charlie has a 4th-generation encryption scheme lined up. If he does, he should've gone straight to it to avoid the effects of people cracking Bell and Globecast, if in fact it's possible.
 
And getting hammered again today, as of this post down $1.79 or -13.52% and at a new 52 week low. It was as low as $10.94 a share earlier today.
 
I'm skeptical that Nagra 3 has been cracked, because Bell is (almost?) completely converted now and the pirates are complaining.

But I'm also skeptical that Charlie has a 4th-generation encryption scheme lined up. If he does, he should've gone straight to it to avoid the effects of people cracking Bell and Globecast, if in fact it's possible.

I agree wholeheartedly. Why send out 3rd gen encryption when you have 4th gen available. I think the reason why they are doing it this way is due to the fact that they don't want people to take a whack at the 4th gen so quickly while others are on the 3rd gen. They must want to be a step ahead. They will probably want a 5th gen to be available by the time its time for a 4th gen swap.
 
Net loss was 10K.

So basically Dish loses 1 in 14 subscribers every quarter (or 1 in 4 customers every year). OUCH!!!!! They have some serious issues with keeping their customers happy then.

I just got two bad leased refurb 522's in a row as a replacement for a 721 that was working fine. This is another reason why Dish is losing so many subscribers.
 
Any possibility the new smart cards support the new 4th gen Nagrastar? Seems kind of premature to start talking a card swap for Nagra4 when the swap for Nagra3 isn't in the books yet.
 
Remember when Charlie tried to buy D*? When he couldn't arrange financing, he lost his $250m good faith deposit.

Now it's looking like takeover talk will start. Shoe's on t'other.

To have only one sat provider would be a bad thing, although how could they merge when they have such disparate equipment and streams?
 
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.

This statement makes little sense. Virtually all TV's sold these past couple of years are HD TV's. A friend who is the department manager at a local Walmart tells me that's all they sell. They have a wall of these flat screen TV's on display and a couple of CRT tv's collecting dust in a corner. He can't recall the last time they sold a CRT TV.

So Charlie says consumers aren't spending money on HD, eh? Are we to believe most people buy HD TV's just to watch standard definition broadcasts?
 
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This statement makes little sense. Virtually all TV's sold these past couple of years are HD TV's. A friend who is the department manager at a local Walmart tells me that's all they sell. They have a wall of these flat screen TV's on display and a couple of CRT tv's collecting dust in a corner. He can't recall the last time they sold a CRT TV.

So Charlie says consumers aren't spending money on HD, eh? Are we to believe most people buy HD TV's just to watch standard definition broadcasts?

Charlie figures that if you believe he's jettisoning channels to save subscribers money you'll believe anything. :)
 
This statement makes little sense. Virtually all TV's sold these past couple of years are HD TV's. A friend who is the department manager at a local Walmart tells me that's all they sell. They have a wall of these flat screen TV's on display and a couple of CRT tv's collecting dust in a corner. He can't recall the last time they sold a CRT TV.

So Charlie says consumers aren't spending money on HD, eh? Are we to believe most people buy HD TV's just to watch standard definition broadcasts?

Problem is most of those customers plug their same old cable into the back, stretch the content and think they are getting HD.
 
Problem is most of those customers plug their same old cable into the back, stretch the content and think they are getting HD.


Those people certainly exist but I think you give too little credit to most people. Even my cranky 76 year old father-in-law knows better.
I think the vast majority of HD tv buyers know the difference between standard/low resolution TV and HD TV.
Not only that but I believe most know the difference between the 720p TV's and full 1080p one's.