Amid SD-WAN Growth, Windstream Reports Losses For Q4, Full 2017

Windstream Thursday reported a $1.84 billion loss, and $1.5 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2017.

That compares to an $87 million loss, and $1.3 billion in revenue for the same quarter in 2016. For the full year, Windstream reported a $2.1 billion loss and $5.85 billion in revenue, compared to a $384 million loss and $5.39 billion in revenue for 2016.

Nearly a year ago, Windstream completed its acquisition of EarthLink, and last summer it wrapped its purchase of Broadview Networks.

Windstream’s Tony Thomas

“2017 was a very productive year for Windstream,” said Tony Thomas, Windstream’s president and CEO. “We delivered improved financial and
operating results for almost all metrics across the business and positioned the company for growth. We continued to see growing demand for our SD-WAN service and strategic enterprise products, as well as increased customer adoption of faster broadband speeds as a result of our significant network investments.”

Service revenue was $1.47 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to $1.3 billion for the year-ago quarter. Consumer and small business ILEC service revenues were $476 million, a 4 percent decrease from the year-ago quarter.

Enterprise service revenues were $760 million in the fourth quarter, a drop of less than 1 percent from the year-ago quarter. SD-WAN represented more than 15 percent of enterprise sales during the quarter, and SD-WAN sales increased in every quarter of last year.

Wholesale service revenue was $190 million, an 8 percent decline from the year-ago quarter.

CLEC consumer service revenues, which mostly consist of EarthLink’s consumer internet business, were $51 million, down 5 percent from the year-ago quarter.

“For 2018 we are focused on advancing our industry-leading enterprise and wholesale service capabilities and launching faster, more cost-effective broadband deployment techniques,” Thomas said. “We will further simplify our business and transform customer-facing and internal tools and drive revenue improvements through enhanced sales and improved customer retention. We also will continue our work to optimize our balance sheet.”

Last week, Windstream unveiled new brands for its enterprise and wholesale businesses after deciding not to change the name of the company. Its cloud and connectivity unit became Windstream Enterprise and Wholesale, combining all enterprise, wholesale and CLEC/SMB business units.