TORONTO – The fourth quarter of 2006 was "one of the best quarters this company has ever had," Rogers Communications founder and CEO Ted Rogers said Thursday.
Consolidated revenue grew 14.4% to $2.4 billion and consolidated operating profit jumped 46.3% to $752 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2006.
On the subscriber side, wireless Postpaid ARPU (average revenue per unit/subscriber) increased 6.1% while postpaid churn fell to 1.24% in the quarter. Cable and telecom residential and business local telephony lines surpassed 920,500, and solid growth in cable and high-speed Internet subscribers continues.
Despite the good news, Rogers cast a wary eye on Ottawa and the year that was in telecom deregulation decrying the speed at which regulations holding back the incumbent telephone companies are falling by the wayside.
Rogers spoke of the "balanced evolution" when it comes to deregulation in Canada but the past few months (where Industry Minister Maxime Bernier issued two previously unheard of policy directives to the CRTC) have seen that balance and evolution replaced. "It’s like some sort of revolution, Bastille Day or something like that," he said. All the regulatory change makes for an uncertain market, he said, which in turn, drives up costs.
Despite that, Rogers saw strong subscriber growth continue at wireless, with quarterly net postpaid additions of 189,300 and net prepaid additions of 55,200.
The company also added 95,100 cable telephony residential subscriber lines (of which 13,100 were migrations from the circuit-switched platform) to end the quarter with 365,900 residential voice-over-cable telephony subscriber lines.
Basic cable subscriber gains were 10,700 in the year versus an increase of approximately 8,000 in the fourth quarter of 2005. Digital cable households increased by 69,600 in the quarter to reach a total of 1.134 million while residential high-speed Internet subscribers grew by 44,800 in the quarter to a total of 1.29 million.
As for 2007, Rogers official guidance predicts overall revenue between $9.7 billion and $10 billion and operating profit of up to $3.4 billion; wireless revenue of up to $5 billion, cable & telecom revenue of $3.7 billion and media revenue of up to $1.325 billion.
