Stock Market News & Stocks to Watch from StraightStocks » Windstream Corp

Windstream Tops But Sales Dip – Analyst Blog

Zacks Market Commentaries — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:40:12 +0000

Windstream Corp. (WIN), a leading rural telecom carrier, reported operating results for the third quarter with adjusted earnings per share of 24 cents, exceeding the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 21 cents. Adjusted EPS excludes one-time items such as restructuring charges, merger and integration costs and non-cash pension expense.

Reported net income of $80 million (18 cents a share) reflects a 24% year-over-year decline on account of lower revenues, which declined 8% year over year to $734 million. Service revenues fell 5% year over year to $704.9 million while product revenues declined 44% to $29.4 million. Average monthly service revenue per customer remained stable year over year at $79.99. Operating income declined 17% year over year to $225.4 million.

Windstream continues to experience steady decline in its fixed-line business given the rapid customer migration to cellular services. Total access lines declined by roughly 27,000 lines in the quarter to reach approximately 2.93 million lines, down 5.2% year over year. This was, however, partly offset by net addition of 26,000 high-speed Internet customers, bringing the total broadband customer base to approximately 1.05 million (up 9% year over year).

Momentum for digital TV business continues with more than 11,000 new customers added during the quarter. Windstream’s video subscriber base reached roughly 323,000, representing 18% penetration of primary residential lines.

The company generated $242 million cash from operation in the quarter and spent $67 million in capital expenditure, resulting in a free cash flow of $175 million. Windstream exited the quarter with $290 million in cash and cash equivalents and $5.2 billion in total debt.

Windstream remains committed to its share repurchase initiatives leveraging healthy free cash flow generated through its ongoing cost-cutting measures. The company repurchased 8.9 million shares in the third quarter, returning roughly $89 million to its shareholders. Approximately $80 million remaining under the current $400 million share buyback authorization which is set to expire at the end of 2009.

Windstream continues to acquire smaller rural carriers to expand its customer base. The company has received unanimous approval from Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission for its impending acquisition of rural phone and Internet service operator D&E Communications (DECC) for $159 million. The acquisition will strengthen Windstream’s foothold in Pennsylvania, providing 165,000 access lines and 44,000 high-speed Internet customers.

To boost its high-speed Internet business, Windstream is buying privately held regional competitive local exchange carrier NuVox Inc for roughly $643 million. The acquisition will strengthen Windstream’s presence across the Southeast and Midwest states, where NuVox has a strong market presence. The deal will also provide meaningful cost synergies and 90,000 new business customers across 16 states.

Read the full analyst report on "WIN"
Read the full analyst report on "DECC"
Zacks Investment Research

DrStockPick.com Stock Report! 10/29/09, AMRB, CSRH, WIN, KRNY, JMBA, TXT

Dr. Stock Pick — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:27:23 +0000

Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts! _______________________________________ FREE Daily Stock Alerts From DrStockPick.com _______________________________________ Thursday October 29, 2009 DrStockPick.com Stock Report! ************************************************************** Consorteum Holdings Inc. (OTCBB: CSRH) announced that it has proceeded to launch its consumer stored value rebate card. The consumer rebate card program will offer manufacturers and retailers a new way to process mail-in rebates that [...]

Bullish MACD for Windstream – Zacks Tale of the Tape

Zacks Market Commentaries — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:05:34 +0000

Windstream Corp.’s (WIN) MACD indicator has crossed over to bullish territory with a reading of 0.0992. The Zacks #2 Rank (“Buy") stock has advanced more than 1% to $8.84 in afternoon trade. The Zacks Consensus Estimate on the company’s full-year earnings has edged up a penny over the past 2 months to 87 cents per share.
"WIN" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?
Zacks Investment Research

Two Dividend Stocks Set to Surge in Bill Gross’ “New Normal”

Contrarian Profits — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:12:52 +0000

div divThe first thing we did on our return to the world of markets and money this morning was to read “bond king” Bill Gross’s investment outlook for July. We consider this compulsory reading. Gross, the managing director of PIMCO, is one of the smartest underground investors out there. And his no BS approach to the financial markets is always refreshing. pstrongemNotes/em /strongfaithful will recall that last month Gross predicted that the economy is heading for what he calls the “new normal” – “higher savings, lower consumption, and an economic growth rate that staggers forward at a new normal closer to 2% as opposed to 3½%.” And we touched again on Gross’s advice for investors in our Friday issue./p pThe bottom line for Gross#8230;/p/div/div

How to Avoid the Dividend Trap… and Find Stable, High-Yield Investments

Louis Basenese — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:52:42 +0000

pstrongCountless studies demonstrate that dividend-paying stocks outperform non-payers by a wide margin. From 1972 to 2006 dividend-paying stocks returned an average of 10% annually versus 4% for non-dividend payers, according to Ned Davis Research. Going back to 1926, other studies confirm almost half of the S#38;P 500’s return was due to the dividends paid by the companies in the index./strong/p pSo, I’ll take Bill Gross’ recommendation one step further. Forget now. Dividend-paying stocks ALWAYS deserve a place in your portfolio./p pYet, in this market, it’s increasingly difficult to find reliable dividend stocks./p p“This is going to be the worst [dividend-cutting year] in 50 years,” Howard Silverblatt, Senior Index Analyst at Standard #38; Poor’s, predicted in January. So far he’s right with industry titans like#8230;/p

Need an Income Investment? Keep Dumping GE and Buy this Stock Instead

Louis Basenese — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:45:04 +0000

pBack in January, I advised you to dump everyone’s sweetheart dividend stock, strongGeneral Electric/strong (NYSE: a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AGE" target="_blank"GE/a) in favor of strongTEPPCO Partners/strong (NYSE: a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATPP" target="_blank"TPP/a). Many balked at the idea. But the results don’t lie…/p pYear-to-date, strongGeneral Electric/strong is the worst-performing stock in the Dow, down 22.3%. Meanwhile, TEPPCO is up 69%, including dividends./p p(If any of you took me up on my income investment recommendation, e-mail us and let us know how you did at a href="mailto:comments@investmentu.com" target="_blank"comments@investmentu.com/a.)/p pOf course, part of the move higher for TEPPCO can be attributed to news that strongEnterprise Products Partners/strong (NYSE: a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AEPD" target="_blank"EPD/a) is buying the company, as I predicted./p pFor those of you that purchased the stock, I recommend you take profits now. And whatever you do, don’t reinvest them in GE./p pstrongGE: Reasons Why It’s#8230;/strong/p

Need An Income Investment? Keep Dumping GE and Buy This Stock Instead

Investment U — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:31:01 +0000

Need An Income Investment? Keep Dumping GE and Buy This Stock Instead by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist Back in January, I advised you to dump everyone’s sweetheart dividend stock, General Electric (NYSE: GE) in favor of TEPPCO Partners (NYSE: TPP). Many balked at the idea. But the results don’t lie… Year-to-date, General Electric is the worst-performing stock in the [...]

Windstream Narrowly Beats in Q1 – Zacks Tale of the Tape

Zacks Market Commentaries — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:31:08 +0000

Windstream Corp. (WIN) announced today that its first-quarter EPS of 24 cents, excluding items, squeezed past the consensus by a penny, although it experienced a 5.6% revenue dip amid economic turmoil.

Sales came in at $755 million, down from $800 million in the prior-year period.

Meanwhile, the company indicated that it expects to generate between $705 million and $775 million in free cash flow during this year, an increase of $20 million from its prior view.

Windstream added about 31,000 new high-speed Internet customers this quarter, which is almost double the previous quarter's levels. With the additions of these new customers, the company now has a total broadband customer base of over 1 million, up nearly 11% from last year.

The company also stated that it added more than 21,000 digital TV customers during the quarter.

The full-year consensus for this Zacks #2 Rank ("Buy") stock is pegged at 91 cents per share, where it has been for the past 3 months.

Next year's estimate has gone up a penny in the past month to 92 cents per share, as 1 out of 15 anlaysts guided higher.

Shares rose more than 2% on lower-than-usual volume of 1 million, in contrast to the daily average of 3.2 million.

"WIN" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?
Zacks Investment Research

CenturyTel’s Bid for Embarq Will Likely Jump-Start a Wave of Mergers Among Rural Telecom Players

Contrarian Profits — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:45:34 +0000

CenturyTel Inc. (CTL) will acquire rival Embarq Corp. (EQ) in an $11.6 billion deal that could kick-start a flurry of mergers among rural-regional telephone carriers. The deal should be good for the two companies, said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst who is well known for his coverage of the telecom sector.

“There has been a lot of talk recently about Embarq wanting to be acquired,” Kagan told MarketWatch.com. “However, the financial crisis that is on the front page every day made finding a partner difficult. That may have lowered the price Embarq hoped to get. CenturyTel saw an opportunity and jumped in to acquire Embarq. Timing was on CenturyTel’s side in this deal.”

The all-stock deal – announced yesterday (Monday) – calls…

CenturyTel’s Buyout Bid for Embarq Will Likely Jump-Start a Wave of Mergers Among Rural Telecom Players

William Patalon lll — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:30:17 +0000

By William Patalon III Executive Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report CenturyTel Inc. (CTL) will acquire rival Embarq Corp. (EQ) in an $11.6 billion deal that could kick-start a flurry of... Money Morning is here to help investors profit ha...

High dividend stocks of S&P 500.

Vlada Kynsky — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:21:00 +0000

I run my fundamental stock screener searching stocks with the highest dividend yield. Report list only companies included in index S&P 500. Not surprisingly except one (GM) there are only financials and banks in top ten. The one of the highest yield was for financials compared to other sectors already before credit turmoils. And after deep fall we can see almost incredible yield over 30% for MBI.
I list below one more table. Just to show top 10 high dividend stocks purged from financials.

Top yielding stocks in S&P 500

Symbol	Company Name	Industry	Yield
(MBI)	MBIA Ord Shs	Titleinsur	33.58
(ACAS)	American Capital Strat.	ClFundDebt	18.36
(RF)	Regions Financial Corp	StheastBnk	14.74
(KEY)	Keycorp Ord Shs	MonCentBnk	13.51
(BAC)	Bank of America Ord Shs	MonCentBnk	11.43
(CMA)	Comerica Inc	MidwestBnk	10.7
(WB)	Wachovia Corp Ord Shs	MonCentBnk	10.08
(GM)	GENERAL MOTORS	AutoManu	9.88
(HBAN)	Huntington Ord Shs	MidwestBnk	9.65
(MI)	Marshal & Ilsley Ord Shs	MidwestBnk	9.05

High dividend S&P 500 stocks (banks and financials excluded)

Symbol	Company Name	Industry	Yield
(GM)	GENERAL MOTORS	AutoManu	9.88
(CZN)	Citizens Comms Ord Shs	TelecomDom	8.84
(Q)	Qwest Communications Intl	TelecomDom	8.51
(DDR)	Developers Diversified Realty	REITRetail	8.44
(WIN)	Windstream Corp	TelecomDom	8.3
(GCI)	Gannett Co Inc	PublshNews	8.16
(XL)	XL Capital Class A Ord Shs	PropInsure	7.65
(FNM)	Fannie Mae Ord Shs	Mtginv	7.46
(PFE)	Pfizer Ord Shs	MjrDrgManu	7.21
(RAI)	Reynolds American Inc	Cigarettes	7.19