During the fourth quarter of last year, Quebecor-owned Videotron passed an important milestone: Besides growing its revenue, it is now counting more than 900,000 subscribers.
Following the Big 3, it was Quebecor’s turn to report its fourth-quarter earnings and to analyze its performance for last year. Quebecor has reported a total revenue of $1.05 billion, up 2.6% from Q4 2015, while revenue was $4.02 billion for the total calendar year of 2016, up 3.2% from 2015. Overall Quebecor’s telecom segment grew its revenues by $144.8 million or 4.8% and its adjusted operating income by $63.6 million (4.6%) in 2016.
As Quebecor highlights in the press release, Videotron “significantly” increased its revenues from wireless services. In numbers, this means an increase of 26.4% compared to the previous year.
During the year, Videotron has increased its wireless subscriber base with 117,900 new subscribers. During the fourth quarter, Videotron has added 26,200 “connections to the mobile telephony service,” the company said.
“We are satisfied with the results Videotron recorded in 2016 and confident that the opportunities created by long?term trends in the wireless industry will support continuing sustained growth in our mobile telephony services,” said Manon Brouillette, President and Chief Executive Officer of Videotron. “We will maintain a disciplined approach to balancing the pursuit of subscriber growth with control over customer acquisition costs in order to maximize the profitability of the mobile service. Mobile telephony contributed strongly to the 117,900 increase in Videotron’s revenue-generating units in 2016 and the $9.18 (6.8%) increase in ARPU.
Average revenue per user — or ARPU, a key metric in the wireless industry — was up 6% in the fourth quarter to $148.56 compared to the same period a year ago, and up 6.8% to $144.86 in the full year of 2016 compared to 2015.
