PAETEC Reports Earnings, Keeps Pace

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PAETEC Reports Earnings, Keeps Pace

February 16th, 2010 by Rob Powell · Leave a Comment

Competitive service provider PAETEC (NASDAQ:PAET - chart, news) reported earnings this morning, without too many surprises. Basically, the met guidance and most trends continued on the same track we had been seeing all year. Here is a quick table summarizing the company’s sequential performance in 2009:

$ in millions	Q1/09	Q2/09	Q3/09	Q4/09
Revenue	399.2	395.2	395.6	390.1
EBITDA	63.9	63.5	64.2	65.2
Earnings	-3.3	-16.5	-6.5	-2.4
Capex	27.2	30.0	27.7	36.6
Free Cash Flow	34.0	36.3	36.5	28.7
Gross Margin	50.2%	50.1%	50.8%	50.8%
EBITDA Margin	15.8%	16.1%	16.2%	16.7%

Revenues were down sequentially, but largely due to there being fewer business days in the quarter. Analysts seemed to be expecting $391M or so, so they may see it as a bit light but nothing major and within the right range. Loss per share on the other hand was $0.02, better than analysts were expecting.

While revenue has continued to go nowhere fast, EBITDA margins continued to improve during the quarter to 16.7% and they held on to their gross margin gains from the prior quarter as well. Perhaps having more fiber in their diet has been doing them some good after all.

As for 2010, the company is projecting revenues of $1590-1630M, which corresponds to 1-3% growth for the year. Nothing to write home about perhaps, but growth is growth after 2009. Full year EBITDA is projected to be $260-275M, which seems like a reasonable range.