Towerstream net loss widens 18% in 2013, but revenue grows

TOWERSTREAM CORP. reported a full-year 2013 net loss of $24.8 million, or 38 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $21 million, or 39 cents per share, the year before. Towerstream's revenue, however, rose 3.6 percent in 2013 to $33.4 million.
TOWERSTREAM CORP. reported a full-year 2013 net loss of $24.8 million, or 38 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $21 million, or 39 cents per share, the year before. Towerstream's revenue, however, rose 3.6 percent in 2013 to $33.4 million.

MIDDLETOWN – Towerstream Corp. saw its net loss widen 18 percent in 2013 to $24.8 million, or 38 cents per share, compared with the $21 million, or 39 cents per share, loss reported for 2012. (The per-share loss improved because the company sold shares during the year that netted $30.5 million, thus adding to the number of shares outstanding.)

Even as its bottom line fell, the fixed-antenna 4G and Wi-Fi/small-cell network services provider saw its sales rise 3.6 percent to $33.4 million from $32.3 million the previous year.

“We expect HetNets Wi-Fi revenue to continue to grow at a double-digit rate sequentially,” said company President and CEO Jeffrey Thompson, “while we position the company for carrier small-cell deployments in the second half of the year.”

In the fourth quarter alone, Towerstream posted a net loss of $6.8 million, or 10 cents per share, widening by 5.2 percent the net loss of $6.4 million, or 12 cents per share, reported for the same three-month period in 2012. Revenue increased to $8.5 percent in the three months ended in December, rising 3.5 percent over $8.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.

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Customer churn – which refers to the percent of revenue lost on a monthly basis from customers disconnecting from the Towerstream network or reducing their bandwidth – was 1.93 percent in 2013, compared with 1.59 percent a year earlier.

However, Towerstream reported that revenue per user averaged $761 last year, compared with $717 per user in 2012, and that the launch of a new 100-megabyte-per-second offering has gained traction among new customers.

Towerstream’s Los Angeles market gave the strongest performance in the fourth quarter, with revenue of $2.06 million, a slight increase over the $2.058 million reported in the fourth quarter of 2012. The Providence-Newport market showed revenue of $85,000 in the 2013 fourth quarter, a decline of 31.5 percent compared with the 2012 fourth-quarter revenue of $124,000.

Towerstream’s Boston market revenue fell 6.5 percent to $1.58 million in the fourth quarter compared with last year’s revenue of $1.69 million.

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