Telecom Ramblings

Global Crossing reported earnings today, and they don’t seem to be feeling any effects from the macro economic environment.  With respect to the projections from my earnings primer, revenues were a bit stronger than expected at $653M, adjusted gross margin was inline 53.1%, and SG&A costs were a bit higher – offsetting the higher revenue.  The result was that EBITDA was reasonable at $77M, consistent with full-year guidance.  Overall, that was almost predictable, which has traditionally not been easy with this company.

They moved their rest-of-world Brazilian revenue to GC Impsat, which shifted the per segment revenues a bit,  something I thought they would have done long ago since it has been a year since the acquisition – but no big deal otherwise.  Wholesale voice revenues were slightly off, but the higher margin stuff was slightly up, hence a better revenue mix.

So here is another vote for the thesis that telecom is not being hurt operationally by the current macro environment.  One could argue that it is the large multinational corporate environment that can save the most by buying more telecommunications services rather than airplane tickets at times like this, so telecoms that serve that market are more likely to be somewhat immune to a recession than those like PAETEC who serve more regional customers.