Time Warner Cable Inc, the second-largest U.S. cable television operator, said on Wednesday that third-quarter profit fell due to a large year-earlier gain.

Net profit declined to $248 million, or 25 cents per share, from $1.2 billion, or $1.20 a share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose 25 percent to $4 billion from $3.2 billion, primarily because of the company's acquisitions.

Wall Street analysts on average had expected net profit of 26 cents per share on revenue of $4.04 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Time Warner Cable said it had lost 83,000 basic video subscribers during the quarter, while adding 128,000 digital video subscribers.

Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce had been expecting Time Warner Cable to post basic subscriber losses of 45,000 and add about 87,000 digital video subscribers.

The cable operator added another 275,000 phone subscribers and 224,000 high-speed Internet subscribers.

Joyce forecast that Time Warner Cable would add another 204,000 phone subscribers and 195,000 high-speed Internet access subscribers.

Time Warner Cable is 84 percent-owned by media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. It went public in February, after its parent used a 16 percent stake in the company as partial payment for cable systems it bought from bankrupt operator Adelphia in a deal with Comcast Corp that closed in July 2006.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke and Pat Fitzgibbons; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Comcast Time Warner