This article is more than 1 year old

BellSouth Q4 disappoints

Profits halved

US telco Bellsouth brought in Q4 revenues of $5.15bn, in the last three months of 2004, up 0.8 percent on Q4 03, but profits took a tailspin to $496m (Q4 03:$836m).

BellSouth blamed hurricane damage, "severance-related expenses" and changes to retirement healthcare schemes for the shortfall. It was also hit by merger costs incurred by Cingular in its takeover of AT&T Wireless.

Earnings related to Cingular fell due to: "seasonal decline in roaming revenue, high gross customer additions, costs associated with incrementally higher customer upgrades and increased depreciation expense".

BellSouth added 224,000 DSL customers in the last quarter of the year - giving it 2.1m broadband customers in total. This helped offset losses from ordinary access lines. Network data revenue for the three months was $1.16bn, up 6.5 per cent on the same period last year. The telco also added 467,000 net long distance customers - giving it 6.1m long distance customers. ®

Related stories

AT&T to deploy WiMAX in 2006
Cingular eyeing AT&T Wireless again
BellSouth to cut 5,000 jobs, blames regulators

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like