BCE’s wireless unit is improving, says Garcea

“We support management’s successful efforts to strengthen its branding (aka Bell Media) and revenue-focused execution, while it has aggressively cut costs to protect margins that have been held essentially flat over the past 5 years,” said Northland Capital analyst Ralph Garcea. Northland Capital Partners issued a note on BCE (TSX:BCE) after the Canadian media and telecom giant posted third-quarter earnings.

For the three months ended September 30, net income dropped to $569 million and adjusted net earnings fell to $588 million, or 76 cents per share. Adjusted EPS was a penny below recent analyst estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue was up slightly from last year at $4.98 billion compared with $4.91 billion in the third quarter of last year.

Analysts had estimated BCE’s adjusted earnings would be 77 cents per share on revenue of $4.9 billion, according to estimates Thomson Reuters.

“We support management’s successful efforts to strengthen its branding (aka Bell Media) and revenue-focused execution, while it has aggressively cut costs to protect margins that have been held essentially flat over the past 5 years,” Northland Capital analyst Ralph Garcea said in the note.

“Positive short-term trends have emerged for the wireless business.”

Looking ahead, Northland estimates fourth-quarter earnings of $0.65 per share on revenue of $5.16 billion, compared to consensus estimates of earnings of $0.67 per share on revenue of $5.19 billion.

For the full year, Northland is predicting earnings of $3.18 per share on revenue of $19.97 billion versus consensus earnings estimates of $3.15 on revenue of $20.1 billion.

Joyanta Acharjee
Proactive Investors
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