Rogers Communications Inc. earned 10 percent more revenue and saw its profits rise by more than a third in the three months to the end of June, a financial reporting period that ended just before a devastating outage ended with the company’s worldwide telecommunications networks. country
The telecommunications giant released quarterly results before the stock market opened on Wednesday, and the numbers painted a picture of a company whose business was booming.
Wireless revenue rose 11 percent to $1.8 billion “primarily as a result of higher roaming revenue associated with a significant increase in travel,” the company said. Rogers added roughly 122,000 new wireless customers in the quarter, roughly double the number it added a year ago.
In addition, cable revenue rose 3 percent to just over $1.03 billion, “primarily as a result of changes in service pricing,” the company said.
The media division saw the biggest boost of all, with revenue up 21 percent to $659 million compared to the same period a year ago. The main reason for this increase was the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, which Rogers owns, being able to return to home games and televising them from the Rogers Center in Toronto.
This time last year, the Blue Jays were playing at home in the United States due to COVID travel restrictions.
Across all business units, Rogers posted revenue of just over $3.8 billion in the quarter, up 8% from last year, and posted a profit of $409 million, up 35% from a year ago .
The cost of disruption has yet to be accounted for
However, all of that financial performance came before July 8, when the company’s network was knocked out by a botched upgrade that led to cascading outages across the country.
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Rogers’ major outage affects businesses and customers across Canada
Rogers customers were caught off guard by Friday’s massive outage involving both mobile and Internet networks, which also caused widespread disruption to banks, businesses and some emergency services across Canada.
Rogers estimates it expects to issue about $150 million in rebates to customers as compensation for the outage, and is committed to spending billions in capital investments to upgrade its systems to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“The investments we are making to improve the reliability of our networks are the right thing to do and will not affect our pricing in this highly competitive market,” a company spokesperson told CBC News this week.
Rogers also officially pushed back its self-imposed deadline to complete its merger with Shaw until the end of the year. When the merger was first proposed in early 2021, both sides expected it to be completed by now, but regulatory delays pushed the deadline to July 31.
On Wednesday, the company revealed that it did not expect to make the deal official until later this year.