Comcast's stock has taken a beating of late for a variety of reasons. All the talk of FiOS has many of them worried, as did the looming (and so far unfounded) rumor that the company was interested in making a major wireless broadband play. But the company's fussy investors got a gift this morning with Comcast's fourth quarter earnings results, which bested most analysts' estimates. The company reported higher than expected profit for Q4, and announced a new annual dividend payout for shareholders.While the company continued the industry-wide trend of losing basic video customers with 94,000 departures, Comcast added 523,000 digital video subscribers. The company also added 331,000 broadband customers, and continued their dominance of the VoIP industry by adding 475,000 VoIP customers. There's some interesting additional commentary by Larry Dignan over at ZDNet, who insists that $42.44 is the number consumers should be watching:As we've noted, AT&T and Verizon are by and large engaging in non-price competition with Comcast, a benefit of a market that maintains the illusion of competition, but in reality offers very little. As an aside, we're seeing rumblings this morning that Comcast, ever afraid of the dumb pipe, is buying social networking outfit Plaxo.