A playoff run by the Toronto Blue Jays helped boost revenue for Rogers in the fourth quarter, but that was offset by continued soft ad sales for conventional TV and print publications, the company said Wednesday.
Rogers Communications Inc., one of Canada’s largest telecom, internet and media companies, also saw an 8% increase in operating expenses. That was partly because of higher sport-related programming costs that offset cuts in other programming and publishing costs.
Operating revenue in the fourth quarter was $3.45 billion, up from $3.37 billion in the same period the year before but short of the estimate of $3.48 billion. For the full year, revenue was $13.4 billion, up from $12.85 billion in 2014.
Net income for the quarter was $299 million, bringing the total for 2015 to $1.38 billion — both up slightly from 2014.
But Rogers saw its fourth-quarter adjusted net income fall to $331 million from $355 million, missing analyst estimates by five cents per share.
The company’s adjusted operating profit, another financial measure that Rogers uses as a benchmark of its performance, fell to $1.226 billion for the fourth quarter from $1.233 billion.
Analysts had estimated that adjusted net income would be unchanged from 69 cents per share in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to Thomson Reuters.
Instead, Rogers reported its adjusted net income for the three months ended Dec. 31 was or 64 cents per share, while net income amounted to 58 cents per share before adjustments that remove restructuring expenses and other items.
