Commonwealth raises EPS guidance

Commonwealth Telephone Enterprises today raised its guidance for its second, third and fourth quarters, as well as its full-year earnings per share. Based primarily on improvement in CTSI, its CLEC subsidiary, Commonwealth boosted its second-quarter EPS guidance to a range of 26-27 cents from 18-19 cents.

Additionally, Commonwealth raised estimates on its 2001 fully diluted EPS to a range of $1.07-$1.12.

“In the quarter, CTSI’s revenues are anticipated to be slightly better than our previous forecast, while CTSI’s costs are expected to be significantly lower,” said Michael Mahoney, president and CEO of Commonwealth.

For the third and fourth quarters, the company is raising guidance on EPS to 27 cents to 29 cents and 29 cents to 31 cents respectively.

Delving a little further into the improvement in the CTSI, Mahoney credited the decision in December to sell off CLEC operations in Binghamton and Syracuse, N.Y.; Charleston/Huntington, W.V.; Youngstown, Ohio; and southeastern Pennsylvania that are not geographically contiguous to its existing ILEC service areas.

The result has been improved margins that are now expected to hit the 20% range, he said.

“In terms of interest in the assets, there’s not been a tremendous amount, but we’ve been diligently exiting those markets,” said Mahoney. “We’ll effectively be out of those markets by the second quarter.”