Rogers’ mobile users get smart; subsidies help drive 3Q profits down 24%

In the three months ended 30 September 2010, Canadian quadruple-play operator Rogers Communications’ consolidated net income fell by 23.7% year-on-year to CAD370 million (USD363 million), from CAD485 million a year earlier, as group revenues rose by 2.6% to CAD3.12 billion from CAD3.04 billion. Rogers’ mobile division increased its quarterly revenue by 4% y-o-y to CAD1.82 billion and posted CAD823 million in operating profits, although the wireless operating margin shrunk to 48.3% in Q3 2010 from 51.4% in the same period of 2009, as the company heavily subsidised more than half a million gross smartphone activations or upgrades in the third quarter. It also launched a budget mobile talk and text brand, ‘chatr’, in July to compete better with newcomers including Wind Mobile, Mobilicity and Public Mobile, contributing to a net increase of 86,000 pre-paid subscribers in the quarter and a drop in blended monthly mobile ARPU to CAD64.80, down from CAD66.45 a year earlier. By the end of September 2010, 37% of Rogers’s post-paid wireless users owned a smartphone, up from 28% twelve months before, whilst mobile data revenues grew 28% y-o-y in 3Q10 and also accounted for 28% of Rogers’ wireless network revenues in the same quarter, up from 23% in 3Q09. Rogers’ Cable division added a net 54,000 cable-based TV, broadband internet and telephony customers in the quarter, including 20,000 digital phone users, and increased its operating margins in each of the three cable segments.