The fourth-quarter fiscal reports that pay-TV satellite operator DirecTV Group issued last month revealed a continuing trend that has finally gotten the attention of market analysts. For several quarters, DirecTV has reported impressive subscriber gains from its DirecTV Latin America division. Now, with a 16 percent jump in the operator’s fourth-quarter profits, primarily driven by the growing scale of DirecTV Latin America and offset by a slowing U.S. market, analysts believe the company should find its proper focus.

   “Latin America is now the core business,” Bernstein Research Analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a report. “We expect DirecTV Latin American operations to account for around 40 percent of the group’s revenue by the end of 2015, from around 18.5 percent at the end of the 2011 fourth quarter.”

   DirecTV added a net 590,000 subscribers in Latin America in the fourth quarter, up from 378,000 subscribers tacked on a year earlier. DirecTV’s U.S. division may still be significantly larger, but the market only gained 125,000 subscribers, which missed analysts’ projections and represented a significant drop from the 378,000 subscribers the company gained a year earlier. DirecTV’s subscriber base in Latin America reached 7.87 million by the end of last year – up from 5.8 million a year earlier, due to strong demand in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. That figure includes subscribers of Sky Mexico, which closed the year with 4.01 million clients. The Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency already reported that Sky Brazil has reached 3.79 million users. All remaining clients – about four million – belong to PanAmericana division, which covers most Latin American countries.

   In a statement, DirecTV CEO Michael White said that his company would need to focus more on retaining customers in the United States as the market matures. So, the operator increased spending to acquire and retain new customers during the quarter. Barclays Capital Analyst James Ratcliffe highlighted the fact that DirecTV’s sales increased 13 percent in 2011 to $7.46 billion, which exceeded projections and placed focus on the company’s activity in North America. “The focus is likely to be on the company’s strategy and expectations for the U.S. market in 2012,” Ratcliffe said in a report.

   The operator’s slow subscriber gains in the United States may concern investors as DirecTV battles rising programming costs and cable rivals, according to Nomura Securities International Analyst Michael McCormack. “It’s costing more for DirecTV to acquire customers, and U.S. subscriber gains were weaker than expected,” McCormack said in a statement. “At the same time, Comcast is limiting video customer losses. The dynamic is that cable’s Internet bundling is becoming that much more important as the way people watch TV develops. In Latin America, however, DirecTV gained 590,000 customers in Latin America, topping the record 574,000 achieved in the previous quarter as it added services to challenge pay-TV rivals such as America Movil SAB.”

   DirecTV Latin America’s segment revenue in 2011 was $1.37 million – up 33.1 percent year-over-year. The division’s quarterly ARPU was $60.41 versus $61.12 in the prior-year quarter, primarily driven by foreign currency fluctuation. Its average monthly subscriber churn rate in the reported fourth quarter was 1.65 percent, compared with 1.55 percent in the prior-year quarter.