Incumbent telco BellSouth, slated to merge with AT&T before the end of the year, posted its Q3 06 earnings report this morning showing all the customary phone company trends, except for one: slowing DSL growth. Revenues for the company were flat sequentially but rose 3% year-over-year to $5.218 billion. Net income, however, rose sharply, climbing 19% sequentially and 30% year-over-year to $1.059 billion as cost-cutting measures trimmed expenses.
Line losses continued, with the number of BellSouth access lines dropping 2% sequentially and 7% year-over-year to 19 million. One of BellSouth’s growth engines, DSL, is cooling, with the telco adding 176K net new DSL customers during the quarter, up from seasonally weak Q2 06 levels but down 14% form the Q3 05 net DSL additions of 205K.
BellSouth is the second major telco in as many days to report slowing DSL growth. Future parent company AT&T reported yesterday that it added 29% fewer DSL customers in Q3 06 than it had added in Q3 05.
Although growth in all kinds of broadband subscriptions should be slowing as the market becomes more fully penetrated, we won’t know until cable operators start reporting their earnings results if the telcos’ slow-down is a result of maturation or if the lower speeds, and relatively limited availability, of DSL are increasingly proving to be less attractive to customers.
BellSouth’s DBS packages, offered in partnership with DirecTV, continued to post steady gains. The company added 65K new video customers during the quarter, wrapping up Q3 06 with a total of 756K video subscribers. Once AT&T takes over BellSouth (the Democratic FCC commissioners stand-off notwithstanding), the combined company will serve 1.3 million video customers.
| BellSouth Operating Statistics | |||||
| 3Q05 | 4Q05 | 1Q06 | 2Q06 | 3Q06 | |
| Total access lines (mil.) | 20.4 | 20.0 | 19.8 | 19.3 | 19.0 |
| Change | (0.4) | (0.4) | (0.2) | (0.5) | (0.3) |
| % change | -2% | -2% | -1% | -2% | -2% |
| DSL customers (000) | 2,678 | 2,882 | 3,145 | 3,273 | 3,449 |
| Quarterly adds (000) | 205 | 204 | 263 | 128 | 176 |
| % chg. in quarterly run rate | 65% | 0% | 29% | -51% | 38% |
| Video (000) | 460 | 523 | 628 | 691 | 756 |
| Change | 66 | 63 | 105 | 63 | 65 |
| Operating Revenues | $ 5,072 | $ 5,200 | $ 5,171 | $ 5,206 | $ 5,218 |
| Operating Income | $ 971 | $ 997 | $ 1,246 | $ 1,305 | $ 1,445 |
| Net Income | $ 817 | $ 618 | $ 784 | $ 887 | $ 1,059 |
| Operating Margin | 19% | 19% | 24% | 25% | 28% |
| Source: Emerging Media Dynamics, Inc. analysis of BellSouth data. | |||||
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:42 AM|Comments(0)
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