MONTREAL – BCE reported an influx of new wireless postpaid customers in its third quarter, which it said helped to lift both revenues and profits for the period.
The Montreal-based company said Thursday that net earnings increased 2.1% to $817 million while net earnings attributable to common shareholders grew 2.4% to $770 million due to growth in operating revenue that drove higher adjusted EBITDA as well as lower income taxes, partly offset by increased net depreciation and amortization expense and higher interest and other expense. Excluding severance, acquisition and other costs, net losses or gains on investments, impairment charges and early debt redemption costs, adjusted net earnings were up 1.9% in Q3 to $799 million.
Operating revenue grew 5.0% in Q3 to $5.68 billion, driven by 5.9% higher service revenue reflecting increases at both Bell Wireless and Bell Wireline, which included a favourable financial contribution from the acquisition of MTS, as well as top-line growth at Bell Media. Product revenue decreased 6.8% to $356 million due to lower wireline data product sales to business customers.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 5.8% to $2.37 billion on year-over-year growth of 9.4% at Bell Wireless and 4.4% at Bell Wireline, supported by the financial contribution of Bell MTS. Bell Media adjusted EBITDA of $187 million was stable compared to last year.
BCE reported 117,182 net new wireless postpaid customers in Q3; a net loss of 10,200 wireless prepaid subscribers; 44,424 net new high-speed Internet customers; 36,399 net new IPTV customers, and a net loss of 34,661 satellite TV customers. Residential and business NAS line net losses totalled 84,762.
At the end of Q3, BCE customer connections across all services totalled 21,991,681, up 5.0% from last year. The total includes 9,008,273 wireless customers, up 7.5% over last year (including 8,243,446 postpaid customers, an increase of 8.8%); total high-speed Internet subscribers of 3,763,101, up 8.8%; total TV subscribers of 2,825,754, up 2.9% (including 1,517,833 IPTV customers, an increase of 16.6%); and total NAS lines of 6,394,553, an increase of 0.6%.
BCE and Bell Canada president and CEO George Cope said the company’s broadband Fibe and mobile LTE-A network deployments spurred its best Q3 postpaid net additions since 2012, as well as its first quarter of year-over-year combined Internet and IPTV customer increases since Q1 2015.
“The competitive advantages enabled by Bell's advanced fibre and wireless networks, coupled with strong execution of our broadband innovation strategy by the Bell team throughout Canada, delivered almost 200,000 net new broadband postpaid wireless, Internet, and IPTV customers in Q3 – up more than 8% compared to last year – and significant increases in network usage, revenue, and customer satisfaction," Cope said in a statement.
The full details of BCE’s Q3 2017 financial results are available here.
