Here are a few comments on some of the news in the metro fiber space today:
European metro fiber operator euNetworks reported earnings this morning. Revenues climbed to €8M, up 14% over last year which is quite a reasonable clip considering the economic headwinds. Gross margins of 80% reflect the company’s increasing focus on its fiber assets, as the percentage of revenue derived from network services rose from 75% last year to 98% in the latest quarter. It has now been a year since CEO Brady Rafuse took the helm, and the company seems ready to make a bit more noise this year.
Integra Telecom apparently is going to release earnings later today to debt holders, though hopefully that will filter down to the rest of us. The financials should be interesting, but at the bottom of that PR were numbers I have been hunting for a while: 1386 on-net buildings on 2800 metro fiber route miles, more than I thought they had. I’ll have to update my metro fiber statistics list soon, both for Integra and for the rest of the sector.
Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) announced the next focus area for its local markets initiative, in the southwestern US. That means a regional general manager and some new capacity investment in Phoenix, Tuscon, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City – which covers a lot of ground but of course not very much water. The PR didn’t happen to mention this time what sort of fiber assets and on-net footprint they start with, but this a region where the assets came almost entirely from level 3’s wholesale past and therefore probably start with rather few mid-market enterprises on-net. My own research suggests they have around 50 on-net buildings or perhaps a bit more spread across all four markets, half of which are in Phoenix. Lots of room to grow though!
And finally, we have a new corporate blog in the neighborhood over at American Fiber Systems. That’s Dave Rusin territory of course, and he does have his own blog over at Telecom Straight Shooter already. However, the AFS Fiber Connect Enterprise blog will likely focus more on AFS’s initiatives and interests and less on Dave’s rather more colorful screeds.
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Categories: Financials · Metro fiber
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I think AFS’s new blog is great. Good use of communication and social media!
When you update your list, it would be interesting to look at net revenue growth … for example, if GAAP revenue growth is 1.5% and churn is 2% … you are not growing.
Helps demonstrate organic revenue growth v. acquired (inorganic) revenue growth v. a declining organic business — depending upon the make-up of the company, markets served, penetration, customer mix …