Rogers Communications Inc. says its first-quarter profits grew 15%, helped partly by more subscribers upgrading their smartphones.
The telecommunications and media company reported Monday it earned $414 million for the quarter, up from $360 million a year ago.
On an adjusted basis, earnings were 80 cents per share, beating analyst expectations of 77 cents per share based on a poll by Thomson Reuters.
Revenue increased to $3.03 billion from $2.94 billion. Analysts had estimated revenue of $3.06 billion for the period.
“The record first-quarter levels of both revenue and adjusted operating profit which Rogers reported represents a solid start to 2013,” said president and CEO Nadir Mohamed in a release.
“The positive operating trends which we achieved during 2012 are carrying into the new year.”
In its wireless division, postpaid net subscriber additions weakened by 15% during the period. For the quarter 32,000 accounts were signed up, compared with 47,000 a year earlier, to bring its total postpaid subscribers to nearly 7.9 million, up from 7.6 million a year ago. Average revenue per postpaid user was $68.56, up from $67.39.
Rogers lost 93,000 prepaid wireless subscribers in the quarter to bring its total to just under 1.5 million compared with 1.7 million a year ago. Average revenue per prepaid user was $14.63, down from $14.99.
Competition has been fierce in the wireless industry among Rogers, Bell, Telus and new players like Wind Mobile, Mobilicity and Public Mobile.
Cable customers were down 87,000 from a year earlier, while the total dropped 25,000 since the fourth quarter, the company said.
Rogers is Canada’s largest cable TV operator and wireless operator and is a major magazine publisher, TV and radio broadcaster and owner of the Toronto Blue Jays.
It also owns a slate of print magazines including Maclean’s and Chatelaine. (Disclosure: Rogers also owns Marketing.)
