With the sale of its data center business set to shake things up in coming quarters, Windstream turned in a third quarter earnings report that surpassed analyst projections. Revenue grew sequentially to $1.50B, higher than the $1.47B projected, while the net loss per share was just 0.08.
The revenue boost came in part from higher enterprise revenues, which rose strongly to $501M during the quarter, and higher carrier service revenues, which surged to $169M. Meanwhile, CLEC and ILEC small business revenues held steady, a positive shift from prior quarters despite the ongoing customer attrition there. Incremental contributions from CAF-2 were also a big piece of the puzzle. Adjusted OIBDAR, which doesn’t include the rent paid to CS&L for the network assets it spun off, checked in at $550M.
Windstream says it expects to use the proceeds from the sale of its data center business to help reduce debt by $300M. The other $275M will go toward the company’s Project Excel broadband upgrade, now expected to be done by the end of 2016. They also still expect to sell the 20% stake they retained in CS&L ‘at the right time’ — it is currently valued at $595M.
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Categories: CLEC · Financials · ILECs, PTTs
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Their earnings release is hysterical!!! It’s like alphabet soup. They’ve got so many lettered footnotes describing so many pro forma measures that I can’t imagine anyone truly understanding what’s going on inside those financial statements. I got dizzy trying to figure it all out.
Their decision to create that silly REIT is pure financial alchemy.
Scott Sullivan must be back in the industry.
how much was the CAF-2 and how much was spent on the network?