Time Warner Cable profit rises

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Net profit rose to $327 million, or 33 cents per share, from $266 million, or 27 cents a share, a year earlier.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Cable Inc <TWC.N>, the second-largest U.S. cable operator, on Wednesday posted a 23 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit from higher numbers of broadband and digital phone customers.

Net profit rose to $327 million, or 33 cents per share, from $266 million, or 27 cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose 12 percent to $4.1 billion from $3.65 billion.

Wall Street analysts had been on average been expecting net profit of 31 cents per share on revenue of $4.13 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

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Time Warner Cable is 84 percent-owned by media conglomerate Time Warner Inc <TWX.N>, which spun off a 16 percent stake a year ago as partial payment for cable systems it bought in July 2006 from bankrupt operator Adelphia Communications Corp.

Time Warner Cable said it added 168,000 digital video subscribers and 214,00 high speed Internet customers during the quarter, ahead of some expectations.

Analysts at Soleil, for instance, had forecast that Time Warner would add 150,000 digital subscribers and 210,000 new Internet subscribers.

Time Warner Cable continued to see healthy growth with its digital phone service and added another 285,000 subscribers, compared with around 260,000 new phone subscribers expected by Soleil.

For 2008, the company said it expects revenues to rise about 9 percent and earnings per share from continuing operations to be in the range of $1.25 to $1.30.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch and Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney and Gerald E. McCormick)