Earnings were a push and pull of higher expenses from royalty expenses and higher general administration costs on one hand, and lower subscriberacquisitioncosts on the other.
This concept, which appears on the surface to be quite benign, is typically used to compare the costs of acquiring a customer (often referred to as SAC, which stands for SubscriberAcquisitionCosts) with the discounted positive cash flows that will come from that customer over time.