Shaw reported its third-quarter earnings today with surprising results: Profits more than tripled thanks to its acquisition of Wind Mobile and the sale of its media assets, but what disappointed investors was earnings from ongoing operations.
Shaw reported revenue of $1.28 billion, up 13%. The surprise element was Wind: Excluding the carrier, it would have risen 1.4%. Earnings from continuing operations were 11 cents per share, significantly lower compared to analyst expectations, which averaged 35 cents per share.
“We continue to make significant progress in our journey to becoming an enhanced connectivity provider. Our third quarter financial and operating results include a full quarter contribution from WIND Mobile (“WIND”), our new wireless division, and we are pleased to confirm that during the quarter we surpassed over 1 million wireless subscribers. We also completed the first critical step in our wireless network upgrade. All 3G equipment in western Canada has now been replaced with Nokia equipment which enables us to increase speeds and throughput as well as put to use an additional 10MHz of AWS-1 spectrum to significantly enhance performance,” CEO Brad Shaw said.
The company also announced it is planning to invest $1.2 billion this year, including investment in Wind Mobile. Shaw said it would spend C$250 million to upgrade Wind’s network in fiscal 2017, as reported by Reuters.
CEO Brad Shaw concluded that by the end of fiscal 2017 the company he leads will have the X1 set-top box available to all customers, complete the rollout of the LTE upgrade in its existing markets, and have DOCSIS 3.1 implemented throughout the wireline network, enabling Internet speeds of 1 Gbps and more.
