Canaccord Genuity analyst Dvai Ghose has released a note to clients today calling Rogers the “weakest” wireless carrier in Canada, based on the latter’s latest earnings report (via Financial Post).
Yesterday Rogers released their 2013 Q3 earnings which resulted in a dip in wireless revenues related to roaming fee price drops.
Ghose downgraded the Rogers stock to hold from buy, based on the fact the company’s wireless earnings were weak compared to other incumbents Telus and Bell:
“In addition, while Rogers believes that roaming reprice is a negative for all wireless carriers, in fact, roaming is a growth driver for Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility…”
[…]
“While Rogers attributed weak Q3 postpaid wireless subscriber loading to the CRTC mandated move to 2-year contracts from 3-year contracts, as well as iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S shortages, we assume much better subscriber growth from Bell and Telus,”
The analyst went on to explicitly state out of Canada’s Big 3, wireless performance by Rogers is the weakest:
“We remain bullish on incumbent wireless, but Rogers is clearly the weakest in the group,”
[…]
“In summary, we conclude that better than expected wireless margin was generated by very weak subscriber loading, which does not bode well for future wireless EBITDA,”
Rogers now has 73% of its wireless postpaid subscribers using smartphones, which now totals 8.04 million, to go along with 1.458 million prepaid users, for a total of 9.498 million total subscribers, the most in Canada.
