Friday, 13 December 2013

CenturyLink - Scraping The Bottom, But Yielding More

No doubt exists that the local telecommunications market is fundamentally flawed, but it doesn't mean that local providers such as CenturyLink (CTL) and Windstream Corporation (WIN) lack a rewarding future for investors. Both CenturyLink and Windstream trade near 52-week lows after decent Q3 results yet investors haven't been willing to step up and buy the stock.

The third largest telecom provider in the U.S. continues to pivot from a legacy voice service to one that focuses on growing data hosting, broadband, and TV services. The shift hasn't come without pains for investors, but CenturyLink remains a financially strong telecom service provider.

The ultimate question for investors is whether one wants to focus on the constant strong cash flow generation and massive cash returned to shareholders or to focus on the minute details of the revenue growth and market potential.

Building A Future

One real key takeaway from all of the quarterly earnings reports is that CenturyLink and even Windstream continuously shift from legacy services to more strategic ones including data hosting, high-bandwidth data services, and consumer TV.

In total, strategic revenues in Q3 for CenturyLink grew 4.2% compared to the same period last year. The main factors were solid subscriber growth with the addition of 33,000 high-speed Internet customers and 17,000 Prism TV customers. Again, the numbers aren't massive, but the growth in these areas provides stability with the declining legacy revenues.

Analysts forecast Windstream to report a less than 1% decline in revenues for 2014. Again stability is the name of the game in this sector and along with stability comes positive cash flows and mega-dividends.

Source:http://seekingalpha.com/article/1862841-centurylink-scraping-the-bottom-but-yielding-more

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