West Corp revenue and profits up 17%

[eomaha]

Obviously the federal do not call list hasn't hurt this future Omaha F500 prospect.

West Corp. earnings, sales rise

West Corp.'s third-quarter revenue and profits both rose 17 percent, largely on results from the Omaha teleservices company's newest businesses - teleconferencing and debt collection.

Sales of traditional services such as telemarketing and customer care continued to rise, but the increase was outstripped by the growth in the newer businesses.

Revenue in West's Communication Services division, which covers outbound and inbound sales work and customer care, rose by $4.5 million to $197.59 million, nearly two-thirds of all revenue.

But the Conferencing division increased revenue $13.77 million to hit $75.25 million. Receivables Management raised revenue to $34.78 million, an increase of $25.78 million.

In last year's third quarter, Communications Services accounted for just under three-fourths of West's overall revenue.

"There is more diversity of revenue than ever before," Tom Barker, West's president and chief executive, said Thursday in an analysts' conference call.

Overall revenue in the quarter that ended Sept. 30 was $307.61 million, compared with $263.55 million in the 2003 quarter. Profits hit $28.51 million, 41 cents a share, compared with $24.37 million, 35 cents, a year earlier.

Of the $44.06 million increase in revenue over the third quarter of last year, $24.2 million came from West's acquisition in August of Worldwide Asset Management LLC, a debt-collection and debt-buying company. West bought Attention, another collections company, in 2002.

West bought teleconferencing companies InterCall and ConferenceCall in 2003, adding them to a small teleconferencing business it had started.

Sales to AT&T, which once accounted for 30 percent of West's revenue, fell again in the third quarter, dropping to $21.2 million, just 6.8 percent of overall revenue and 44 percent lower than in the third quarter last year.

AT&T stopped selling long-distance service to residential customers earlier this year; it still uses West for customer service on things like prepaid calling cards.

So far in 2004, AT&T's purchases of services from West have totaled $78.3 million, compared with $113.9 million in the first nine months of 2003.

AT&T "continues to have a difficult year," Barker said.

While outbound calling continues to fall as a share of total revenue, as West has planned, the company is preparing to bring a new 750-seat outbound call center near Youngstown, Ohio, into operation early next year.

AT&T Wireless, a 2001 spinoff from AT&T, passed its namesake and became West's single biggest customer in the third quarter. The wireless company bought $31.2 million in services, 10.1 percent of West's revenue in the quarter. Year to date, it has bought $76 million, just behind AT&T's $78.3 million.

For the first nine months of the year, profits were up 26.6 percent to $82.69 million, $1.19 a share, on revenue that rose 22.8 percent to $880.67 million.

In August, West forecast that 2004 revenue would be $1.15 billion to $1.18 billion with the collections division providing $65 million to $70 million of that. Profits were estimated at $105 million to $110 million.

West shares fell 2 cents Thursday to close at $29.51.

[Sodak]

Did anybody else catch the article in Saturday's paper announcing that West will be adding 500 more jobs? Good news indeed.

[eomaha]

Yeah... thank goodness... as the feds were putting the kabosh on 'cold calling'... consumers accumulated enough debt to create demand for collections calls!