A record quarter for smartphone sales helped Rogers Communications exceed analysts’ expectations in the fourth quarter of 2012.
The company reports a 3 percent gain in quarterly revenue to $3.26 billion and 88 cents in earnings per share – beating estimates of $3.19 billion and 72 cents per share.
Rogers recorded quarterly net income of $455 million, up from $350 million in the corresponding quarter a year earlier.
The company also announced an annualized dividend rate increases of 10 percent to $1.74 per share.
Company President and CEO Nadir Mohamed says Rogers exited 2012 with accelerating growth across its asset mix and with continued improvements in its key metrics.
He said it was a record quarter for smartphone sales in the wireless business, the cable division did well with strong Internet growth and industry-leading margins, and the media business continued to improve and grow.
“Importantly, we achieved or exceeded all of our full-year financial guidance metrics and are well positioned for 2013,” said Nadir, who also announced plans to retire from the company in January 2014.
Last week, Rogers had to remove some “high-level” financial information from one of its websites after it was accidentally posted there by an employee.
A Rogers spokeswoman has said the financial information, which included annual revenues, was not related to its fourth-quarter financial results.
The information was briefly posted and removed from the website of Rogers Ventures Partners, which invests in technology start-ups.
Rogers says the information also included the size and scope of the Toronto telecom company. It included annual revenue in specific divisions of the company “rounded up to hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The company has told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that a $50 cap on extra wireless data charges, such as roaming fees, would be too disruptive to cut off customers.
Under the CRTC’s draft wireless code, wireless companies would have to suspend some services when a customer reaches either $50 in additional charges over and above what they pay for their monthly plan – though roaming fees, for example – or an amount each consumer would set.