Rogers added its highest number of postpaid wireless subscribers in over two years in the three months ending September 30th, the company announced today.
In its Q3 earnings results, Rogers claimed 77,000 net postpaid subscribers, a 78 jump over the same period lat year. The company’s revenue stood at $3.38 billion for the quarter, a four percent boost over Q3 2014, boosted almost entirely by its wireless and media divisions, which rose five and eight percent respectively. Net income was up 16 percent over Q3 2014 to $472 million, increasing earnings per share to $0.92.
The company’s wireless division continued to grow on strong adoption of its Share Everything plans. Rogers said that 33 percent of its customer base has now transitioned to the higher-priced Share Everything solutions, increasing revenue for the division to $1.97 billion.
Rogers noted that it is now counting Mobilicity’s 154,000 prepaid customers in its total subscriber numbers, which increased to 9.82 million, still the highest in Canada. While the company no longer tallies postpaid ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), it reported a four percent uptick in Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) over last year to $113.34.
The company attributes its continued wireless growth to the compelling value proposition of its newly-updated Share Everything plans. CEO Guy Laurence said during an earnings call that 2.1 million Canadians had opted into Roam Like Home, the company’s simple daily roaming solution for the United States, Europe and the Americas. Rogers noted that roaming revenue was down 14 percent year to date as it pays out higher fees to its international partners, but Laurence justified the downturn by saying the feature has contributed considerable to brand loyalty.
Postpaid churn was stable in the quarter at 1.31 percent, which Rogers says is a sign of healthy wireless growth, since an increasing number of customers under the “double cohort” — where two and three year contracts came to an end at the same time — became aware they could switch providers without paying cancellation fees. The company activated 737,000 smartphones in the quarter, a 20 percent increase over the same time last year, which Rogers claims was partially due to increased retentions spending to keep customers on the network. The percentage of customers with smartphones was unchanged at 88 percent.
Rogers noted that its LTE network now reaches 92 percent of Canadians, an increase of eight percent over Q4 2014.
[source]Rogers[/source]
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