Cogeco Cable reported a 4 percent increase in revenue in its first quarter, though its profit of $42.2 million was down a bit from the $43 million logged in the similar period a year ago.
The company said the dip in profit was associated primarily with the sale of Cabovisao, its former Portuguese subsidiary, and the purchase of Atlantic Broadband. The company also recently purchased cloud services provider Peer 1 Network Enterprises for $635 million.
CEO Louis Audet says his company has no further acquisition plans at this time. The company will focus on integrating Atlantic Broadband and Peer 1, and on reducing debt.
The company said that the number of revenue-generating units (RGUs, though the company uses the term primary service units, or PSUs) grew by 15,080 in Canada in the cable services segment. That, plus half a million customer accounts picked up with the acquisition of Atlantic Broadband, pushed Cogeco’s total RGU count to almost 2.5 million.
The 15,000 adds represent a slowing of subscriber growth, which Cogeco said is mainly the result “of a more competitive environment and tightening of customer credit controls, thus containing collection and bad debt expenses.”
