DISH Network Reports Second Quarter 2010 Financial Results

[Ghpr13]

What upsets me is after researching what D* & E* had to offer I truly felt E* was the better company. E* had the best programming in HD for the money I was able to spend and the best equipment. I still feel that way, but I also feel that E* has taken a wrong turn this year and are basically cutting their own throats with these addition fees and these lawsuits.
Charlie may think he's suing so that his subs can have affordable programming, but when he allows receiver fees to increase while these "program losing" lawsuits continue on, he's just making D* and even cable look more appealing.
As far as the economy causing the churn, the only thing the economy is doing is making people take a closer look at what they're spending on what a lot of people now are considering "extras", like satellite & cable, and decide what they need to cut out. As being done in this forum, people are re-evaluating their subscriptions and E* is not coming out in a good light.

Ghpr13

 

[sbsi]

People subscribing to Int'l channels will gain Dish earnings. Also, Direct TV depending on what language you speak.

 

[Bob Haller]

I do wonder how all this and the nearly universal negativity here is effecting E, both short and long term.

I spoke with a salesman selling both services at a county fair.

he reported they dont even bother trying to sell E over 2 tvs.

the push D heavily for all these perspective customers. because of the extra receiver fees.

heck comcast gives subs a free adapter box for secondary tvs, additional ones are 3 bucks each. scrolling guide but thats fine for lots of applications

E is commiting business suicide and doesnt even realize it.

their stock is going to tank, deservedly so......

 

[TheForce]

I look at what Dish is doing from two perspectives-
1. as a subscriber and 2, as an investor/stock holder.

As a subscriber, I can empathize
with those who get so frustrated they end up churning to a competitor, even if it costs more money for the same thing. I went through CSR stupidity and arrogance last year with a bad 622. After 6 failed 622's in 8 weeks, I finally got one that worked and held good for 5 weeks, then it failed. All for the same damn problem. AS it turned out I learned at CES Dish failed to refurb properly the common failure of the 622 power supply molex connector which was causing the constant rebooting issues. In Dec 2009 they added this part replacement to all VIP refurb procedures.
Most "normal" customers wouldn't have put up with this nonsense, including the one phone call where a CSR actually insulted me during the call.
Now what I really wanted was to simply pay for a 722K and OTA module but no, they kept fighting me and wouldn't let me order one. Finally after talking to one VP at CES I got a phone number of an exec secy who kindly processed my request for the desired equipment and she did this for FREE! as an apology for all the trouble the CSR's ( I took names!) put me through. Perseverance paid off for me but why in the first place should a 10 year customer be treated that way by the SOP of the CSR's?
Why I didn't jump ship is simple, I like the equipment. Hey I know stuff breaks but that can be fixed unless you are dealing with a bunch of boneheaded idiots who feel they have a duty to annoy the customers unnecessarily. Dish Network really needs to get a handle on their CSR training. They need to have new procedures on how to RESOLVE problems.

Another area I am not happy with is Dishes constant loss of existing channels for reasons they want to play hardball. While none has affected me so far I feel it is just a matter of time. I don't know if there is a solution to this but Dish has to understand that if they pull a must have channel, then the customer will be moving to where he can get that channel.

Price? Personally, I have examined both DirecTV and Comcast cable. Those are my choices here for full service TV. Both are significantly more expensive for the same thing. Comcast signal is a problem in that it often suffers on some channels with poor quality for a variety of technical reasons they seem unable to fix. DirecTV has lower quality equipment and would end up costing me 15% more for the same services. So, Dish all around is my best choice.


AS an investor, I understand that the market these days is very fickle. Dish stock took a tumble and news reporters claim it is due to loss of 19,000 subs. Heck the way this market has been ( Bear Market) any bad news even in the presence of far greater good news will cause a negative spike in the stock. But the few subs lost (0.13 percent) is not unusual +- to cause such a significant drop in the stock ie 12 percent drop. This has more to do with the Dish Market being "oversold" than any real fundamental loss of future revenue. That being the case, the conservative investor, doesn't become a victim of this stock dip, but rather sees it as a buying opportunity. Just recently we saw Dish Stock turn down another $ just because of the Euro value. Now what does that have to do with Dish? So, don't try to read this a s a trend in stock value for Dish but just another stupid move in the market that smart investors will use to their advantage.
Some here tried to compare DirecTV with Dish Network. For the most part the stocks are close to the same price when comparing the actual price/earnings and prifits per share ratios. But DirecTV is now in over bought status while Dish is in Over sold staus, continuing to make Dish the better stock. In addition, DirecTV is trading at about $1 below its 52 week high while Dish is $6 below its 52 week high.

I don't believe Dish is doing anything so awful that it will affect its stock to tumble, unless we do see a 1-3% loss of subscribers as some of you predict in the next qtr. What could cause the stock to tumble on company fundamentals is if the TIVO suit takes another turn for the worse. This legal case has been the only significant influence in the negative turn and no significant turn during positive news for Dish in the last several years. All other stock drivers have been just market conditions unrelated to Dish fundamentals.

 

[Cards Big East]

Slightly OT, but the "Other site" has a topic about this that's 2 pages long. The same topic on this site is 9 pages long.

 

[DishSubLA]

These may be the money losers dish doesn't want, as in the ones who call CSR's too often to complain about silly things or people who won't upgrade, etc. I think, in the past, Dish was focusing on getting the most subscribers, but lately, they seem focused on the quality of subscriber, like Direct seems to because all the other numbers for Dish are positive and good news. If all the other numbers, and they are more important numbers than # of subs, are up, but your lose a fraction of your subscribers, it means Charlie is cutting the dead weight.

 

[Bob Haller]

These may be the money losers dish doesn't want, as in the ones who call CSR's too often to complain about silly things or people who won't upgrade, etc. I think, in the past, Dish was focusing on getting the most subscribers, but lately, they seem focused on the quality of subscriber, like Direct seems to because all the other numbers for Dish are positive and good news. If all the other numbers, and they are more important numbers than # of subs, are up, but your lose a fraction of your subscribers, it means Charlie is cutting the dead weight.

How exactly would charlie cull what you call dead weight?

I am curious.....

 

[Hemi 6.1]

Slightly OT, but the "Other site" has a topic about this that's 2 pages long. The same topic on this site is 9 pages long.

Well the are mostly geared toward D*, and I do believe each page over there hold more posts as well.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Just take a look at the replies column.

Currently they have 37 replies and we have 87. Most of the 37 replies there are from the same people who enjoy talking to themselves.

But if you look at the number of replies from Bob Haller which say the same thing over and over again we might be even.

 

[dvrexpander]

This quarters numbers surprised me. I expected losses like this for the next report... and that tells me if things are this bad now they are going to be much worse next quarter.

DISH Network needs to do a few things...

1) Work with programmers, why does EVERYTHING lately with DISH have to end up in a lawsuit? Keep your partners happy and you will have the programming your PAYING customers want! DISH has been such a prick to its programmers that the p rogrammers dont want to talk anymore... no company should have a relationship like that with their PARTNERS.

2) Get rid of the god damn audit team. Stop treating your paying customers as criminals... sure some are stacking but at least your getting PAID. The word of mouth alone is costing DISH customers

3) Communicate with us and not these BS marketing fluff that we get on the Charlie Chats... Sites like SatelliteGuys are here to discuss and support the satellite industry. Let us help you support your customers which in turn saves you calls and possibly even churn.

4) Admit when you have a problem! Look since last week Sling has been down as so has DISH Remote Access... have you seen any mention of this issue from DISH? Hell those of us with 922's pay MORE per month to have these services and they are not working and DISH is acting like nobody has a problem.

5) Enough with the fees, while I don't see DISH lowering the equipment fees as anyone who was upset about the changes have already left or downgraded their programming. Enough is enough already. Your bleeding some of your highest grossing customers dry, are you trying to scare them away?

6) Stop treating your Techs like Garbage!! Force HSP's and RSP's to pay them what they are worth and stop with the stop nonsense of charge backs and other lame rules.

DISH needs to take a look at their company from the eyes of their customers. WHy they are trying to do one thing it looks another way to the folks that really matter... Their customers.

fixed for a addition.

 

[Ghpr13]

I look at what Dish is doing from two perspectives-
1. as a subscriber and 2, as an investor/stock holder...

:up:up:up

Ghpr13:up

 

[DodgerKing]

Just take a look at the replies column.

Currently they have 37 replies and we have 87. Most of the 37 replies there are from the same people who enjoy talking to themselves.

But if you look at the number of replies from Bob Haller which say the same thing over and over again we might be even.

And they are not a gambling site either.

 

[Greg Bimson]

AS an investor, I understand that the market these days is very fickle. Dish stock took a tumble and news reporters claim it is due to loss of 19,000 subs. Heck the way this market has been ( Bear Market) any bad news even in the presence of far greater good news will cause a negative spike in the stock.

Ah, but you know the essence of the stock market: buy on rumor sell on news.

I know the metrics per se aren't bad, but keep in mind that DISH stock was being purchased over the past few months with projections that subscriber growth was still positive.

Now trend the future. Is this subscriber growth (or should I say contraction) for one quarter simply an anomoly (and no one believes in anomolies) or is this a company that will no longer grow the subscriber base much for the foreseeable future? Don't get me wrong; the rest of the financials look pretty solid, but are investors freaking out about churn, simply because the amount of subscribers that bolt exponentially affects the revenue line?

And of course, that is well in line with most of the concerns of the people in this post. Dish Network appears to be going after the value subscriber. After all, the current markeing plan is geared towards "cheaper" TV: join us and you will pay less. The receiver fees instituted at the beginning of the year also point that direction. If you are a power user with a bunch of HD or DVR's or both, Dish Network wants you to pay.

So it is relatively easy to see why the stock was hammered yesterday. It can be summed up with this:

What type of subscriber does Dish Network want? Because it certainly appears they no longer want multi-receiver subscribers unless they pay through the nose for their equipment, and they want the value subscriber.

 

[mike123abc]

What type of subscriber does Dish Network want? Because it certainly appears they no longer want multi-receiver subscribers unless they pay through the nose for their equipment, and they want the value subscriber.

Dish needs a large number of subs to cover the base operating costs. Satellites are expensive and a couple bucks a month/sub helps cover those costs. The problem of course is that the Whale customers bring in the big profits, but the cheap subs with lots of receivers hurt profits. Perhaps an interesting strategy would be receiver fees based on package:

1. 1 free receiver with any package (as is the case now), receiver fees the same as is now

2. AT200 25% discount on receiver fees

3. AT250 35% discount on receiver fees

4. AEP 50% discount on receiver fees - Even with this discount Dish still gets a price increase. Dual DVR $17/2 or $8.50 vs old price of $7/month. Plus they still collect the $6/10 per month DVR service fee.

This way Dish could cater to both sets of customers. The cheapest possible customers get TV on the cheap, the whales get every channel and lots of recievers at a reasonable price.

I think you are right that they are charging so much for receivers because they cater to the value customer. They cannot recoup expensive DVRs and such from these value customers at $5/month. DIRECTV has the advantage because of the higher price packages covers the extra equipment costs as far as the company is concerned, so it looks better to the higher end sub.

Also Dish has done discounting like this in the past with AEP getting "free" DVR service.

 

[bforce]

I didn't speak to the DIRECTV US net growth other than it needed to be considered apart from that of DIRECTV LA, but since you mentioned it, they tied a record for lowest growth in recent history set in Q1.

If you must see a positive spin before you will relent on your DIRECTV campaign, DISH Network has had greater subscriber losses in recent history.

DK on a *D campaign?? Sorry, but I don't see it. DodgerKing is one of the most fair, open-minded, objective, and helpful people on these boards. I'm a *E sub and while DK might call out Dish on their many issues, he's always fair, and even posts things where *E has an advantage. He also calls out *D on their issues.

He likes his service from *D and says so, that doesn't make one a fanboy.

Just my opinion....

 

[sparc]

one or two of the analysts claimed that dish was trying to cut loose some of the cheap subs.

Except the only problem with that logic is that the receiver price changes and the international price increases directly target the expensive subs...

a lot of the analysts comments seem out of touch with what Dish is actually doing

 

[Cards Big East]

And they are not a gambling site either.

I read that somewhere.

 

[Stargazer]

Dish dropped the cheaper packages that they have. They should allow the cheaper packages only to those that want to pay for their own hardware and install and at least still make them available. Or perhaps a seperate plan for those that do not take any promotions to allow them to get programming cheaper if they do not have to ever be subsidized.