TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. saw its first-quarter profit soar from the same time last year as its wireless division experienced a growth spurt that exceeded analyst estimates.<\/p>\n
The wireless, cable, internet and media company’s net profit was $425 million, up 37 per cent from $310 million in the comparable period last year.<\/p>\n
Adjusted earnings grew even more, rising by 45 per cent to $477 million, while total revenue was $3.63 billion, up eight per cent from $3.37 billion last year.<\/p>\n
The net profit reported by Rogers, under a new accounting standard that it adopted for this year, amounted to 83 cents per share, up from 60 cents per share.<\/p>\n
Growth in consolidated EBITDA, earnings before taxes and other items, was 11.1 per cent — above the consensus estimate of 5.9 per cent.<\/p>\n
More than half of total revenue for Rogers was from the wireless division, which was up nine per cent to $2.19 billion.<\/p>\n
Rogers chief executive Joe Natale told analysts in a conference call after the results were released Thursday afternoon that the overall wireless marketplace, including the company’s rivals, appears to have had healthy growth during the quarter.<\/p>\n
In addition, he said, Rogers made progress in reducing the loss of customers — or churn — by proactively looking for ways to retain customers and investing in improvements at its call centres.<\/p>\n
“If you look at what we’ve been focused on, we’ve been focusing on doing a better job of managing our base of customers and really kind of looking through our base and looking at retention — proactive retention opportunities,” Natale said.<\/p>\n
He said the investments in systems “will continue to pay dividends for us.”<\/p>\n
Among the wireless performance metrics that contributed to the quarter was 95,000 net postpaid additions — compared with 60,000 a year earlier — and reduced postpaid churn of 1.08 per cent, down from 1.1 per cent a year earlier.<\/p>\n
The consensus estimate had been for about 55,000 net postpaid additions and churn of 1.13 per cent.<\/p>\n
The first quarter’s wireless results were a stark contrast to the fourth quarter, when 72,000 net subscriber additions were below estimates.<\/p>\n
Natale said estimated on a Jan. 25 analyst call that technical problems in December, during a seasonally important period, had cost Rogers about 35,000 net additions to its subscriber base in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Rogers has one of Canada’s three national wireless networks, operating under the Rogers, Fido and Chatr brands.<\/p>\n
It also owns the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team through its media division and one of Canada’s largest cable TV networks, based mostly in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.<\/p>\n
Natale said revenue growth at the Rogers media division — which was up 12 per cent from a year ago to $532 million — was primarily due to sports.<\/p>\n
Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. saw its first-quarter profit soar from the same time last year as its wireless division experienced a growth spurt that exceeded analyst estimates. The wireless, cable, internet and media company’s net profit was $425 million, up 37 per cent from $310 million in the comparable period last year. Adjusted earnings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6304,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions\/6304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}