The last of the big incumbent telcos to report financial results, Qwest issued its quarterly earnings report this morning showing a surprising return to profitability. Largely due to a big jump in its DSL customer base, Qwest posted net income of $88 million, compared to a loss of $528 million during the previous quarter. Year-over-year Qwest’s net income rose by about 54%.
Revenue, however, stayed relatively flat, both year-over-year and sequentially at $3.48 billion.
The big star of the quarter was DSL, which throttled ahead by 178,000 net new customers, a run-rate more than double the 80,000 net new DSL adds during Q1 05. By quarter’s end Qwest served 1.68 million DSL customers, representing 50% growth over Q1 05 levels.
Qwest attributed its DSL growth in large part to its bundles of voice, video and data services. The telco offers a DirecTV video option in a packaged bundle and during the quarter Qwest added 44,000 net new video customers, its highest quarterly gain since it began offer the multichannel video option. As of the end of Q1 06, Qwest served 228,000 video subscribers, more than double the 100,000 video customers served at the end of Q1 05.
| Qwest Key Stats ($ in mil., units in 000s) | |||||
| 1Q05 | 2Q05 | 3Q05 | 4Q05 | 1Q06 | |
| Total access lines | 15.34 | 15.09 | 14.93 | 14.70 | 14.55 |
| DSL customers | 1,120 | 1,190 | 1,340 | 1,500 | 1,678 |
| % of total lines | 7.3% | 7.9% | 9.0% | 10.2% | 11.5% |
| Quarterly adds | 80 | 70 | 150 | 160 | 178 |
| Video Subscribers | 100 | 120 | 151 | 183 | 228 |
| Wireless Subscribers | 743 | 744 | 748 | 770 | 784 |
| Operating Revenue | $ 3,449 | $ 3,470 | $ 3,504 | $ 3,480 | $ 3,476 |
| Net Income | $ 57 | $ (164) | $ (144) | $ (528) | $ 88 |
Cynthia Brumfield at 6:52 PM|Comments(0)
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