Comcast Posts 7% Increase in Net Income

Comcast Corp. said Thursday that its second-quarter profit rose 7% from a year earlier as revenue soared, highlighted by a leap in subscribers for its Internet telephone service.

The nation’s biggest cable company also raised its financial outlook for the year, with the number of new subscribers to Comcast Digital Voice expected to be 30% to 40% higher than previously forecast.

Comcast shares rose $1.50 to $34.02.

“It was a great quarter,” said Brian L. Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive, during a conference call with analysts. “We really feel the phone business is coming into its own and will drive an era of growth we haven’t seen in a long time.”

The company expects to roll out a wireless service in the Portland, Ore., and Boston areas as part of a joint venture with Sprint Nextel Corp. Comcast and Sprint will unveil a co-branded cellphone, initially offering Internet connection and limited video. They plan to expand the services to include such features as programming a digital video recorder by cellphone.

In the quarter, Philadelphia-based Comcast earned $460 million, or 22 cents a share, compared with $430 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 11% to $6.23 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected profit of 20 cents a share on revenue of $6.13 billion.

Comcast’s operating cash flow rose 12% to $2.43 billion, while operating income was up 17% to $1.23 billion.

Video revenue rose 7.6% to $3.74 billion. The company added 350,000 digital cable subscribers in the quarter versus 284,000 a year earlier. The average revenue per basic cable subscriber came to $57.49 a month, up 8% year over year.

High-speed Internet revenue rose 22% to $1.21 billion while its phone service -- digital and circuit-switched calls -- posted a 24% gain to $214 million.

About 305,000 customers signed up for Comcast’s high-speed Internet service in the quarter, up 1.7% from last year’s second quarter. The average revenue per subscriber was $43.78 a month, up 1%.

Its digital voice service added 306,000 customers, up 45% from the first quarter and substantially higher than the 15,000 gained in the same quarter last year.

Comcast said it expected to post a 10%-to-11% increase in revenue for the year. The cable operator had projected 9% to 10%.

Comcast expects to add 1.3 million to 1.4 million digital voice subscribers this year.