Caribbean business falls 10% for Cable & Wireless
(CNS): Cable & Wireless Communications (formerly Cable and Wireless International) revealed its first financial results since its demerger from the telecoms group in London yesterday. Seeking to reassure investors Tony Rice, Chief Executive said the company had delivered a good result in what has been a difficult period for all telecommunications companies around the world. He said the planned dividend of 8 cents for 2010-11 was a "base" from which it should rise. The reported revenue of $2.4bn for the year to March 31 was down 4 per cent from last year but revenue fell 10 per cent in the Caribbean region.
“Panama has withstood the initial challenges of two new mobile entrants and continues to perform well, with EBITDA increasing by 3% during the year to its highest level ever,” Rice said. “The Caribbean is facing its most difficult economic conditions in a generation and this has been reflected in the results. The region has stabilised with second half performance broadly in line with the first half but the near term economic outlook is still uncertain.”
Rice said the businesses were “positioned for the future” as the company had leading positions in attractive markets.
Tim Pennington, the firm’s Chief Financial Officer of said it had been both a bust and challenging year.
“CWI produced EBITDA of US$908 million, which met the profit forecast contained within the demerger prospectus,” he said. “For reporting purposes this figure is reduced by US$42 million to US$866 million incorporating a full year of Central costs, which represent the headquarter costs of the former Cable and Wireless plc. One of the benefits of demerger is that we can slimthese costs down and I would expect them to be closer to US$25 million next financial year.”
At the press conference in London Rice said it was too early to say if revenue growth would return this year. The firm recommended a final dividend of 3.34 per share as indicated in the demerger prospectus.
Category: Business
I have spent the last 2 hours trying to call LIME to cancel a phone that went missing – everytime I get to "please hold" after the menu it cuts off after 20 seconds. And I bet they would want me to pay for any calls in this time.
Now where are Digicel stores, because LIME just persuaded me to move suppliers . . . .
Not rejoicing over anyone’s misfortunes but if this is true, C&W (LIME) have reaped what they’ve sown. They can’t expect to give the appalling service they have been and expect that there would be no consequences, especially with such fierce competition in the Caribbean. Of course, what is a 10% loss in revenues or market share when they have bagged billions from the region over the years. But mark my words, that 50+ year success trend will mean nothing in loyalty to them. If they continue to lose $$$ watch for corporate HQ in Mother Country to pull them out of the Caribbean entirely. Watch for Slim Helu and his Telmex communications giant to start expanding into the Caribbean.
Mr. Ritch, please note the content of these postings and try to see if the Cayman LIME operation can improve its CS. Then again, I’ve heard that this jurisdiction is just a pawn to the Caribbean HQ in Barbados.
Tell me about it. I took my bosses Blackberry in for repair and was called by them no less than 4 times to come and pick it up (supposedly fixed) only to arrive and find (after waiting to be served more than half an hour each time) that the phone hadn’t even been fixed and nobody could understand why I was repeatedly being told to come in and collect it! Left hand doesn’t know what the righthand is doing at Cable & Wukkless. Customer service is appalling; products are few and far between; tariffs and product pricings are excrutiatingly high and decent customer incentives that exist in most other countries (e.g. free choice of top-of-the-range phones with yearly contracts and free annual upgrades/free annual (low spec) upgrades for pre-paid customers) are non-existent here. Add to that poor to no signal, particularly when storms come – I already went to Digicel and even though they too, could do better in similar respects am extremely happy with their customer service, friendly staff and quality of service.
C&W is waiting to sell LIME to one of the big world players so there does not appear to be any concern about the long term and instead all that LIME is doing is specialising in ghastly, garish and annoying marketing strategies.
Any of the big boys would be better of leaving LIME and its terrible reputation for service and entering directly. Buying LIME would just taint a better brand.
I spend $3000-5000 a month on my assorted LIME accounts and have no visibility there. Nobody seems to care about the business we bring them or it’s totally taken for granted. I think I’ll switch things to another carrier in the fall. I agree with the other poster who points out how glaringly inefficient their retail outlets are. I’m waiting for 20 mins to change an account that brings them $50,000 CI+ a year in revenue and there are 2 people in line ahead of me farting around with their ringtones or other BS waste of time stuff. Nobody has ever called me to say "thanks for the business" or "here’s your account rep". You’d think they could just list their accounts by the amount of revenue they bring-in and reach out to make sure their customers are happy or ask what they can do better. My cell constantly drops calls overseas and it is often difficult for overseas people to "get through" to me on my cell because their reciprocal agreements are either poor, or incorectly set up (or because of other odd technical difficulties they can’t quite pinpoint).C&W had it so good for so long they didn’t have to hustle. Now times are different. Whatever business they have now will be 50k a year lower by Xmas.
Its TERRIBLE to have operators in Jamaica answering the phone. Most of the time they dont understand us and we dont understand their accent either. You have to wait so long to get a number, I can only imagine how frustrating for a tourist for example calling from overseas for directory. The operators usually ask questions like "is this a business or a residential ?" with such prominent business names. Lime needs to put back CAYMAN telephone operators in place and receptionist such as Lana who everyone know was an asset and one of the best receptionist in this world. Operators out of Cayman has been one of Caymans first down fall. We need operators who is familiar with Cayman and its people.Hope this constructive critism will be taken.
I can only agree. Miss Lana was the brightest parts of C&W. I worked there a loooong time ago, but even well after, every single time I called for anything, she remembered my voice and asked how my family was. A true excellent employee.
Of course the local execs have to report to England, but Mr.Ritch should LISTEN to these posts and know that there is a LOT that cusomter service can do ON THEIR OWN here. Yes, look at account revenues, get better Account Managers (like the old days, they were paid better, but would give better service and answer your questions at 8PM at night and we ALL had their cell numbers and even home numbers!!!)
Digicel is no picnic unless you are a prepaid user. Only marginally better than LIME for data or small biz office phones. They actually treat their employees worse so who do you use???
I’d love to see C&W back to being "good". I never minded the prices when I got the service!!!
I went to LIME in GT to move my account when I was moving house. I had to wait 50 minutes in customer service. (They had 6 other desks working but only 1 for customer service). I asked (nicely) if someone else could assist but they told me they were not going to assist.
After 50 minutes I decided to cancel all my LIME contracts, and I was spending about $300 a month on them.
In my experience, they are world class leaders id BAD customer service.
can’t say my heart is bleeding for them to be honest. They still overcharged me $110 when setting up a broadband account and nobody ever responds to emails or calls back when promised.
The blackberry service only works once a week for 5 minutes so they can deduct another 10 bucks.
If that’s the way they treat all their customers hope they lose millions of dollars next year.