Liberty Media Corp., controlled by cable-television investor John Malone, said profit in the third quarter rose nine fold as the purchase of the QVC shopping network helped sales more than double.

Net income was $372 million, or 13 cents a share, up from $41 million, or 1 cent, a year earlier, the Englewood, Colo.-based company said yesterday. Revenue rose to $1.83 billion from $877 million with the addition of QVC.

QVC’s sales rose 12% to $1.29 billion as Mr. Malone expanded the channel in Japan, Germany, and Britain. The world’s largest home-shopping TV network reached 64.8 million homes in those regions, 12% more than a year earlier.

“The numbers continue to be strong at QVC,” said an analyst with Davenport & Co. in Richmond, Va., George Smith, “Investment in international operations is continuing to pay off in a fairly dramatic fashion.” Mr. Smith rates Liberty shares as “strong buy” and owns the stock.

Liberty last week said it may buy $1.5 billion of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation voting stock to increase its voting stake in the company to 17%, spurring News Corp. to set up an anti-takeover defense on Monday.

Liberty’s chief executive, Robert Bennett, said yesterday on a conference call that the company has “no hostile intentions” toward News Corp. and that Liberty is a “friendly” shareholder.

Mr. Malone and News Corp.’s chief executive, Mr. Murdoch, have invested together in print and broadcast businesses for years, including the Fox regional sports networks in the mid-1990s. Liberty helped finance News Corp.’s purchase of the DirecTV satellite-TV service last year.

The purchase of voting shares is meant only to give Liberty a voting interest in News Corp. that’s equal to its economic interest, Mr. Bennett said. Liberty may pay for the voting shares with nonvoting shares that it already owns.

Messrs. Malone and Murdoch have had several “friendly” and “cordial” conversations in the past week, Mr. Bennett said. A News Corp. spokesman, Andrew Butcher, in a later interview, concurred that the conversations were cordial.

Liberty executives saw an opportunity to buy News Corp. voting shares at relatively inexpensive prices as the company moves its headquarters to America from Australia, Mr. Bennett said. The change is causing stock to come onto the market as Australian index funds sell News Corp. shares.

Liberty got its start as the cable-TV programming arm of Tele-Communications Inc., the cable service provider that Malone ran for more than 25 years. Malone, 63, kept control of Liberty after selling TCI to AT&T Corp. in 1999.

Along with QVC, Liberty’s holdings include the Starz Encore group of movie networks, stock in publicly traded news and entertainment companies including Time Warner Inc. and News Corp. and a 50% stake in Discovery Communications. The earnings of companies that Liberty holds minority stakes in aren’t included in its income statement.

Since buying the controlling stake in QVC from Comcast Corporation last year, Mr. Malone has focused on international growth. The channel, which sells merchandise including bedding, cosmetics, and toys, increased quarterly sales in Japan by 61%, in Germany by 41%, and in Britain by 32%.

Sales from Liberty’s Interactive Group, which includes QVC, rose to $1.52 billion from $599 million, Liberty said. QVC has featured comedian Joan Rivers selling jewelry and singer Shania Twain selling albums.

The channel is now available in 14.3 million homes in Japan, up from 11.8 million as of December 31. It added 2 million homes in Britain for a total of 15.1 million and added 1.9 million in America for a total of 87.8 million. It has 35.4 million in Germany, up from 34.6 million.

Interactive group revenue would have risen 12% if QVC had been included in its results last year, Liberty said.

Liberty began including QVC’s results in its income statement after buying a 57% stake in the channel from Comcast for $7.9 billion.