Cogeco Cable adding 500 voice customers a week

MONTREAL – Beating its guidance and re-setting projections going forward, fiscal 2005 finished pretty well for Cogeco Cable. While its media side didn’t perform as strongly, all of the company’s cable financial and subscriber goals were met or exceeded for the year ended August 31st. Operating income before amortization rose 11.9% while net income finished 30% higher than forecast at $28.7 million. Free cash flow was $45.3 million, within the projected range, even with a pretty big ramp-up in telephony spending. CFO Pierre Gagne said in a conference call with financial analysts that without the voice over Internet protocol telephony...