Hawaiian Telcom passes 190K homes with fiber

Hawaiian Telcom is taking charge of its next-gen broadband rollout, passing an additional 7,000 Oahu households with FTTH in the fourth quarter to bring its total to 190,000.

By enabling more of its households with fiber, the service can achieve two goals: expand the reach of its emerging 1 Gbps broadband services to more homes while enabling more homes with its IPTV service.

"Hawaiian Telcom TV continues to be the leading driver of growth in our consumer channel, pulling through Internet and driving a solid 2.5 percent growth in overall consumer revenues in 2015," said Scott Barber, CEO of Hawaiian Telcom, in the earnings release. "Hawaii's superior entertainment experience can now reach 190,000 households on O'ahu, majority of which are fiber-to-the-home and can receive the market-leading 1 Gbps Internet speed."

While the telco's fourth quarter revenue growth was mainly driven by growth in consumer video and business data services, this growth was offset by the impact of a 10.3 percent decline in consumer voice access lines and 4.3 percent decline in business voice access lines, as well as lower equipment sales from SystemMetrics. 

Here's a breakdown of the company's key metrics:

Consumer: Driven by growth in its TV and high-speed Internet services, fourth-quarter, consumer revenue rose 0.6 percent and 2.5 percent year-over-year for the fourth quarter and full year 2015, respectively, driven by growth in video revenue of $2.1 million and $9.9 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, consumer strategic revenue increased 14.5 percent and 21.0 percent year-over-year for the fourth quarter and full year 2015, respectively.

During the quarter, the telco added 1,900 Hawaiian Telcom TV subscribers during the fourth quarter, ending 2015 with approximately 35,900 subscribers, resulting in penetration of 18.9 percent of households enabled.

Business: Business revenue rose 0.7 percent and 0.5 percent year-over-year for the fourth quarter and full year 2015, respectively, due to growth in data services revenue of $1.9 million and $4.5 million, respectively.

Similar to earlier quarters strategic business service revenue increased 8.7 percent year-over-year for fourth quarter and full year 2015.

Wholesale: While Hawaiian Telcom is seeing more of its wholesale wireless operator customers transition to fiber-based backhaul, it is cutting into its near-term revenues. In the fourth-quarter, wholesale revenues were $14.1 million, compared to $14.7 million in fourth quarter 2014.

The decline was due to one-time charges in the fourth quarter of 2014, as well as the effect of selected wireless carriers during the year disconnecting lower bandwidth legacy circuits on month-to-month rates and moving to more efficient fiber-based, higher bandwidth Ethernet circuits on multi-year contracts. Hawaiian Telcom now has 455 fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT) cell sites completed and another 45 sites under contract to build, creating a solid foundation for future wholesale revenue growth . 

From an overall financial perspective, fourth-quarter 2015 revenue was $99.2 million and $393.4 million for full year 2015.

For more:
- see the earnings release

Earnings summary: From Adtran to Zayo: Tracking wireline telecom earnings in Q4 2015

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