Lumos Aims at the Dark

Fiber, that is. Lumos Networks is introducing a dark fiber offering, shifting its approach to the networking business to include a lower gear. Meanwhile, the company posted revenues and earnings for the first quarter that met guidance and exceeded market expectations.

Lumos’s approach to the fiber market has mostly been about lit services until now, but their growing strength in the tower space has given them some good reasons to start consistently offering dark fiber. They’ll be selling dark fiber for FTTC for both small cell and macro sites, but also for large enterprises and data centers with an eye on the healthcare and education verticals.

In particular, their regional and metro fiber buildouts in and between Richmond and Norfolk mean they’ve got a new supply of new, unique dark fiber routes to offer the market. Lumos added 133 route miles of fiber during the quarter, hooking up 53 new enterprise buildings.

Lumos generated $50.5M in revenues for the first quarter, pulling in $22.5M in adjusted EBITDA and $0.14 in earnings per share. FTTC revenues reached $6.3M, up 14% sequentially and now 12.4% of total revenue. Their target of $29M in FTTC revenue will bring that up above 14% for the full year, as the company reiterated 2015 guidance of approximately $202M in revenue and $92M of EBITDA.

Capex rose to $29.2M during the quarter, and is forecast to be $112M, or about 55% of revenue. That reflects the company’s ongoing fiber buildout projects and their increasing overall shift toward data and bandwidth infrastructure. The growth from those projects should this year finally start to outpace the churn they’ve seen on the other side of the business.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Financials · Metro fiber