<p>Profit at EarthLink Inc., the Internet service provider, more than tripled in the fourth quarter, but revenue fell as subscribers moved to high-speed services.</p><p>The Atlanta-based company Tuesday posted net income of $35.6 million, or 23 cents a share, for the quarter, compared with $10.7 million, or 7 cents a share, a year earlier.</p><p>Earnings were helped by improved efficiencies and lower telecommunications costs, the company said.</p><p>Results for the latest quarter include a reversal of previous estimates for closing down a number of customer contact centers by $597,000. EarthLink closed a number of these facilities in 2003 and 2004 in order to improve efficiency and cut costs.</p><p>The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call was for fourth-quarter earnings, excluding items, of 22 cents a share.</p><p>Revenue slipped 3 percent in the quarter to $338.1 million from $348.6 million. Revenue from dial-up access and Web hosting services fell while revenue from broadband access and from advertising and other services rose.</p><p>Analysts were on average expecting a smaller revenue decline in the latest quarter, to $344.7 million.</p><p>In morning trading, shares of EarthLink fell 88 cents, or 8.6 percent, to $9.40 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.</p><p>EarthLink had 5.4 million total subscribers at the end of the quarter, up 3.5 percent from the same time a year ago. The number of broadband customers increased and the number of dial-up customers fell.</p><p>Overall average monthly churn, an indicator of the rate at which customers are leaving a service, was 4.7 percent, about the same as the third quarter of 2004, but up from 4.1 percent in last year's fourth quarter. EarthLink said the increase was partly due to dial-up customers migrating to broadband services as broadband prices dropped.</p><p>Fourth-quarter telecommunications service and equipment costs fell 15 percent to $101.8 million and free cash flow rose to $44.9 million from $26 million.</p><p>For the full year, EarthLink posted profit of $111 million, or 70 cents a share, turning around a net loss of $62.2 million, or 42 cents a share, for 2003. Revenue fell 1.4 percent to $1.38 billion from $1.4 billion.</p><p>For the full year 2005, EarthLink expects to increase the number of paying subscribers by 200,000 to 250,000 after transferring about 30,000 wireless subscribers to the new SK-EarthLink joint venture. EarthLink expects the transfer to decrease 2005 revenue by about $35 million, but the company doesn't expect it to affect net income.</p>
