Telus (TSX:T) is tipping its hat to both its wireless and wireline divisions following a rise in profits in the fourth quarter of 2014.
The Vancouver-based telecom giant reported Thursday (February 12) Q4 net income reached $312 million, a gain of 7.6% from a year earlier when it posted $290 million. Revenue was up 6.1% to $3.1 billion, year-over-year.
The company added 118,000 post-paid wireless customers during the reporting period, as well as 28,000 Telus TV customers and 22,000 high-speed Internet users.
That puts Telus’ wireless customer base at 8.1 million, a gain of 3.8% from a year ago. Meanwhile, the number of TV and Internet customers rose 5.7% to 1.48 million and 12% to 916,000
“We’re one of the few companies in the telecom sector in the world that’s delivering growth in both (wireless and wireline) divisions, quarter after quarter,” Telus chief corporate officer Josh Blair told Business In Vancouver.
He also credited the company’s 0.94% churn rate of post-paid wireless customers — the lowest rate in North America, according to Telus’ in-house calculations — for the quarter’s solid performance.
Telus' overall churn rate in 2014 was 0.93% compared with Bell's (TSX:BCE) rate of 1.3% and Rogers' (TSX:RCI.A) rate of 1.46%.
The company's gains in TV subscribers also come at a time the company is trying to become more competitive in the streaming entertainment market.
In December, Bell launched Crave TV to go up against other video services such as Netflix and the Rogers-Shaw joint venture, Shomi.
Unlike Netflix, Crave is only available to Bell’s TV subscribers as well as a few other telecom providers, including Telus.
On February 11, Telus announced it would allow customers to begin accessing Netflix directly through its Optik TV set-top box — similar to the arrangement with Crave — instead of making them go through another application on a TV or piece of hardware (such as a PlayStation or Xbox).
“We want to provide the customers what they want,” Blair said.
“They’re going to subscribe to the services they want, regardless, so to the extent we can make that experience easy for them and enjoyable for them inside of Optik, that provides upside for us.”
