TORONTO – Rogers Communications Inc. facing increased competition from traditional rivals BCE and Telus, and from new wireless upstarts such as Wind Mobile offered a modest 2011 growth forecast yesterday.
Rogers expects operating profit to be flat to slightly higher in 2011, at between $4.6 billion and $4.77 billion.
Profit in the fourth quarter, however, was still up by 5% to $327 million compared to the same quarter last year.
The company said it added 123,000 net wireless subscribers during the quarter ended December 31, 2010, which was down 5% from a year earlier. The decline for net post-paid customers was more dramatic, dropping 55% to 49,000 from 109,000 in the year-ago period. By comparison, BCE attracted 156,708 post-paid wireless subscribers in the fourth quarter while Telus added 109,000. The monthly churn rate increased to 1.66% from 1.39% and blended average monthly revenue from post-paid and less profitable prepaid customers fell to $61.72 from $64.80 in the previous quarter
Data revenue grew by 32% and now represents 31% of the company’s wireless revenues, said the company’s release. Wireless revenue was boosted by the activation and upgrade of a record 635,000 additional smartphones during Q4, of which approximately 29% were for subscribers new to wireless.
TV, Internet and telephony services over cable grew by 17,000 connections during the quarter. Internet subscriber penetration is now at 73% of television subscribers and residential voice-over-cable telephony penetration at 44% of television subscribers.
Rogers’ digital cable subscriber base grew by 4% in the quarter, lower than the same period in 2009. The company’s high-speed Internet base was about 1.7 million subscribers at the end of the quarter, ending Dec. 31, 2010.
