Qwest Communications , the Baby Bell serving much of the
Rocky Mountain region and surrounding states, took a $750 million hit in
the fourth quarter as executives continued with their ambitious
restructuring plan, officials announced Tuesday.
Officials don’t expect their fortunes to reverse in the first quarter of
2002, either, as seasonality issues tend to indicate weaker sales in the
beginning of the new year.
The incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) reported net losses of $516
million in the fourth quarter of 2001, more than tripling its loss from Q4
2000, which was $116 million. Exacerbating the losses were flat revenues,
which dropped in the fourth quarter to $4.7 billion, down $314 million from
last year.
Joe Nacchio, Qwest chairman and chief executive officer, said 2002 will be
a transition year, as they get rid of non-essential businesses and focus on
their profitable ones.
“Our overall performance continues to be impacted by economic conditions
nationally and in our local service region, but we are encouraged with the
progress made in some of our key growth areas, including global enterprise,
DSL and wireless,” he said.
Ironically, one of its more successful divisions, digital subscriber line
(DSL) service, won’t be there for long. In April 2001, Qwest
announced it would shut down its dial up and DSL provider arm,
Qwest.net, and encourage a migration to the Microsoft Network .
Qwest ended the year with 448,000 DSL customers, a net add coupled by price
increases that boosted their DSL revenues by 85 percent in the fourth
quarter. The Bell plans to add another 200,000-250,000 DSL customers in 2002.
Another successful division, it’s wireless digital phone service, helped
troubled Qwest with its bottom line, garnering a total of 1.11 million
customers for $211 million in 2001.
Qwest will spend much of the first half of 2002 with its restructuring
plan, an expected event officials reported by in December 2001. In
their gloomy projections for 2002, executives announced 7,000 employees
would lose their jobs by mid-year.
Officials said they have started that process, a process that will
eliminate roughly 80 percent of its customers support staff and 20 percent
of administrative/back office employees.
Of Qwest’s $754 million charge announced Tuesday, $350 million went towards
severance packages for those affected employees. Another $240 million went
to abandoned real estate and another $175 million to what officials call
“asset impairments,” a kind of grab bag generalization that can include
equipment markdowns and other depreciations.