NEW YORK - Comcast Corp , the largest U.S. cable television provider, posted a 32 percent drop in fourth quarter net profit on Wednesday, due to a writedown related to its Clearwire Corp stake and said it lost 233,000 subscribers.

Net profit fell to $412 million, or 14 cents a share compared with $602 million, or 20 cents a share in the year ago quarter.

The company wrote down the value of its stake in wireless company Clearwire by $600 million during the quarter.

Excluding the writedown and one-time expenses, its quarterly profit was 27 cents a share compared with the average Wall Street estimate of 22 cents, according to a poll by Reuters Estimates.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $8.765 billion during the quarter. Analysts had been expecting $8.631 billion.

Comcast also said it would increase its dividend by 8 percent to 27 cents a share for the year.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney)

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