CWJ loss down with much progress

Cable & Wireless Jamaica released quarterly results showing a loss of $315 million compared to $438 million in 2012 from lower revenues and $120 million in restructuring cost.

The latest quarterly results showed improvement in several areas with changes in revenues and cost. The December quarter showed an overall revenue reduction of 19 percent but cost was down as well. The end result is growth in gross margin with gross profit up to $3.65 billion from $3.27 billion in 2012 and moderate improvement in the bottom-line. However, there is far more happening here than meets the eyes. The company is reporting increased revenue from cellular phone usage coming from both voice and data with a growth in the customer base year-over-year. The pace has been growing since 2012 and is up 11 percent for 2013 in US dollars and is expected to increase even more as data usage grows.

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These quarterly numbers have lots of coded information about current and future performances of a company that has bled much blood in the past few years and is trying hard to recover. For the nine months, loss is $1.75 billion and is down from $2.2 billion in 2012. More importantly, the stage is set for a sharp reduction in losses going forward. Landline revenue was down in keeping with the reduction in local termination rates as well as CWJ’s cut in landline call rates during the period. A large part of the revenue reduction came from restructuring of the telephone directory cost which now leaves CWJ in a better position as the risk was reduced.

Cost savings were also achieved in restructuring commission payments to mobile credit distributors and the wage bill was down in the quarter. However, administrative and other cost rose due to the outsourcing of the maintenance work for the phone system. IC Insider believes the future is bright for CWJ and is forecasting an absolute profit in the March quarter and an overall profit in 2015 fiscal year.

CWJ grew its mobile subscriber base, increasing by 23% and quarterly mobile service revenue rose 43 percent over the 2012 prior year quarter in local currency. This increase is after the company changed its method of accounting for active users from counting customers having credit on their phones to those who actually used their phones during the last 60 days. Gary Sinclair, LIME’s Managing Director, stated that 55,000 customers were removed from the total as a result of the change. Nevertheless, the overall number of subscribers are up year-over-year and continues to grow in 2014.

In response to the question, “Is December’s income now representative of what can be expected baring growth or contraction on a quarterly basis,” Sinclair stated that EBITA is actually up in January and that is more indicative of what can be expected.

The strategy is clear, cut cost some more and grow the mobile base, the area of strong growth potential.

In trading on Thursday, investors reacted negatively to the news and sold CWJ’s stock down to 31 cents but some buying came in and drove the price up.

With growth to come in revenues and lower cost on the horizon, Cable & Wireless Jamaica is now a Buy Rated stock.