View Company Profile

In its first quarter as a combined company, the newly rebranded CenturyLink Inc. appears to have slowed line loss as well as putting its data subscriber growth back on track.

The company is the result of an $11.6 billion acquisition of Embarq Corp. by smaller telco CenturyTel Inc. Comparisons for the quarterly results are tricky given CenturyLink did not release pro forma results combining Embarq and CenturyTel results for the third quarter 2008. However, some general estimates can be made by adding up the results for the two companies for that quarter.

During the quarter the now-combined Embarq and CenturyTel operations saw access lines drop by 170,000. That appears to be an improvement from the second quarter’s combined 187,500 line loss and the combined 202,612 voice line losses in the third quarter last year.

That narrowed the combined line count to 7.2 million at the end of the quarter.

At the same time CenturyLink also added 43,000 new high-speed data accounts across business and residential segments. That is up strongly from the 28,600 combined data additions in the second quarter and more or less on track with the 42,600 combined data additions Embarq and CenturyTel posted in the prior third quarter.

At the end of the quarter it claimed a little less than 2.2 million subscribers.

CenturyLink also added 39,500 Dish Network subscribers, bringing its total to 500,000. Sequential comparisons are impossible for this metric given CenturyLink did not release Embarq satellite video metrics for the second quarter, but the net additions for the third quarter appear to be behind the 72,000 combined Dish network customers Embarq and CenturyTel added in the third quarter 2008.

In revenue, CenturyLink drew in $1.87 billion, down from $1.91 billion in the second quarter and off the combined $2.18 billion revenue Embarq and CenturyTel netted in the third quarter last year.

Net income was $269 million, down from the combined $287.3 million net income in the second quarter but up from the $242.7 million combined net income the two companies posted in the third quarter a year ago.

Subscribers: Login to continue reading the full analysis >>