Windstream Corp. of Little Rock on Wednesday reported a fourth-quarter $31.9 million loss, and full year net income slipped 45 percent to $172.3 million.
The quarterly net loss was down 156 percent from net income of $56.5 million. Quarterly net loss per share was 6 cents, down from net income of 10 cents during the same quarter last year.
But quarterly results included several one-time charges and losses. Windstream (NYSE: %%WIN%%) recorded a pre-tax non-cash pension charge of $163 million on changes to its pension accounting method.
The company also recorded $23 million merger-related expenses, as well as a $7 million after-tax loss related to early debt extinguishment.
"Excluding all of these items, adjusted earnings per share would have been 19 cents for the fourth quarter," the company said in a news release.
In all, company quarterly revenue and sales increased 23 percent to $1.2 billion. For the year, revenue was up 15 percent to about $4.3 billion.
"2011 was an incredibly successful year for Windstream," Jeff Gardner, president and CEO, said in a news release.
"As a result of solid execution in our legacy business, coupled with our targeted acquisition approach, we significantly improved the financial trajectory of our company and reached a significant milestone of growing pro forma revenue and Adjusted OIBDA during the fourth quarter on a year-over-year basis, giving us great momentum heading into 2012."
Windstream said quarterly adjusted OIBDA grew 0.4 percent to $612 million.
During the previous year, Windstream drammatically expanded its footprint with the purchase of Paetec Holding Corp., adding more than 36,000 miles of fiber and seven data centers to Windstream’s network.
Investing in Fiber
In a conference call on Wednesday, Windstream CFO Tony Thomas said the company has budgeted $200 million in investments in fiber-to-the-tower contracts — twice what it invested in 2011.
"There’s a land grab going on," Thomas said. "Fiber-to-the-tower investments should taper down materially in 2013 and be fully wrapped up by 2014."
Broadband stimulus money will allow investments of $45 million in 2012, Thomas said.
In 2011, Windstream completed $30 million in stimulus projects, using $8 million of the company’s own money. Thomas said there should be remnants of the stimulus lasting through 2013.
The company will also invest in datacenter expansions, but Thomas said the investment will not quite reach last year’s $40 million.
"We don’t feel we need to put our capital to work in 2013 associated with datacenter space," Thomas said, noting that Windstream’s acquisition of Paetec has already increased the company’s datacenter real estate.
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