MONTREAL – After working hard to stabilize the company’s operations in Portugal, Cogeco president and CEO Louis Audet said Thursday morning that his company is back looking for assets to buy.
“Hence, we believe the time has come for this company to start looking at reasonably priced, reasonably sized, ‘non-farm-betting type’ of acquisitions”, Audet said in a call with analysts, after releasing the company’s second quarter financial results.
Noting that such opportunities in Canada were slim, Audet said that the company would look in Europe “at markets we feel have growth potential”. While he declined to elaborate on the potential size of any such acquisitions, he did say that they would not be of the magnitude required to ‘bet the farm’.
“We like the farm”, he quipped.
Results for Cogeco’s Portuguese subsidiary Cabovisao showed some improvement, however still recorded a drop of $12.3 million, or 20%, for the quarter ended February 28, 2010. Subscriber loss stabilized to 740 customers, from a decrease of nearly 12,000 in the same quarter last year, while net additions were 21,508 revenue-generating units (RGU).
Here at home, Cogeco Cable continued to generate RGU growth despite early signs of maturation of some of its services. Net customer losses for basic cable service customers stood at 54 for the quarter, compared to net customer additions of 1,955 in the second quarter of the prior year. Digital television service net additions were 14,054 customers for the quarter, compared to 18,693 for the same quarter last year.
Telephony service customers grew by 22,206 compared to 16,411 year-over-year, while the number of net additions for its high speed Internet service was 11,068 customers for the quarter, compared to 10,518 customers for the same period last year.
Consolidated revenue increased by 5.1% to top $320.4 million, while net income was $29.8 million compared to a net loss of $358.3 million in the second quarter of the previous fiscal year.
“With these results, we are well on our way to achieving our revised fiscal 2010 projections as issued in January of this year, and we anticipate RGU growth to surpass these projections to reach 200,000 net additions by the end of the year", said Audet, in a statement.
Cogeco Cable’s parent company, Cogeco Inc., also posted second quarter results on Thursday, with net income of $10.5-million and a 5.5% increase in revenue to reach $329.1 million.
