Rogers issued $150 million in credits for July outage, Q3 results confirm

Rogers increased its total revenue by two percent in its third quarter of 2022, financial results reveal.

The reported revenue of $3.7 billion came from growth in the Toronto-based telecom provider’s wireless and media businesses.

However, total revenue growth would have been much higher, sitting at six percent, if it wasn’t for the July outage that caused the company to issue customers five days’ worth of credit.

The funds totalled $150 million for an outage that impacted both wireless and wireline services, which Rogers blamed on a botched maintenance update. The credits impacted revenue in their wireless and cable categories.

Revenue for wireless services increased by three percent ($1.7 billion) due to more travel as COVID restrictions eased, as well as growth in mobile subscribers. If credits for the network outage weren’t issued, revenue from wireless services would have grown by nine percent.

Revenue from wireless equipment dropped by one percent as fewer people upgraded or purchased new devices.

Despite that outage, the company reports 221,000 mobile phone net adds, an increase from 191,000 last year.

The same growth is not reported for retail internet customers. Rogers only added 6,000 new net customers in Q3 of 2022, compared to 20,000 at the same time last year, a 14 percent decrease.

The results are reported on day three of a four-week trial between the Competition Bureau, Rogers, and Shaw over Rogers’ $26 billion takeover.

At the conference call to discuss results with analysts, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri said representatives wouldn’t be discussing the merger as it’s currently before the Competition Tribunal.

“We remain confident in our response to the commissioner and the response of Vidéotron and Shaw and greatly appreciate the hard work of the tribunal to bring this to a timely conclusion.”

Image credit: Shutterstock 

Source: Rogers