Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

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Bylo Selhi
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Toronto woman sues Rogers after her affair is exposed - thestar.com
A Toronto woman says the billing practices of Rogers Wireless Inc. led to her husband discovering her extramarital affair.

Now the woman, whose husband walked out, is suing the communications giant for $600,000 for alleged invasion of privacy and breach of contract, the results of which she says have ruined her life...

When Nagy’s husband opened the Rogers invoice, he saw several hour-long phone calls to a single phone number.

“Nobody does business this way and he's not stupid,” says Nagy, who is in her 30s. He called the number, spoke to the “third party” who confirmed the affair, which had lasted only a few weeks, Nagy told the Star.

“My husband didn't tell me that's how he found out, he just left.”

“The husband used the previously private and confidential information that the defendant unilaterally disclosed to the husband to inquire about the people that the plaintiff was telephoning and the nature of such calls,” the statement of claim says...
This claim is a bit of a stretch, but no wonder utilities call centres can be so anal about privacy issues when dealing with their own customers.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

As part of their earnings announcement today, they announced a DRIP,
Rogers Communications Announces Dividend Reinvestment Plan wrote:Canada's leading diversified communications and media company, is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors has approved the creation of a Dividend Reinvestment Plan ("DRIP") effective November 1, 2010.

The DRIP will enable eligible shareholders to have all or a portion of their regular quarterly cash dividends automatically reinvested in additional Class B Non-voting shares of Rogers' common stock. No commissions, service charges or brokerage fees will be payable by participants in connection with additional shares acquired under the DRIP.

Shareholders who elect to participate will see all or a portion of their quarterly dividends reinvested in additional Class B common shares of Rogers at the average market price, as described in the DRIP Plan Document, with respect to the applicable dividend payment date.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Serenity »

Peculiar_Investor wrote:As part of their earnings announcement today, they announced a DRIP,
Rogers Communications Announces Dividend Reinvestment Plan wrote:Canada's leading diversified communications and media company, is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors has approved the creation of a Dividend Reinvestment Plan ("DRIP") effective November 1, 2010.

The DRIP will enable eligible shareholders to have all or a portion of their regular quarterly cash dividends automatically reinvested in additional Class B Non-voting shares of Rogers' common stock. No commissions, service charges or brokerage fees will be payable by participants in connection with additional shares acquired under the DRIP.

Shareholders who elect to participate will see all or a portion of their quarterly dividends reinvested in additional Class B common shares of Rogers at the average market price, as described in the DRIP Plan Document, with respect to the applicable dividend payment date.
It looks like Rogers is morphing from a growth stock to a utility stock like BCE. Solid, reliable dividends with prospects for dividend increases over time but limited capital gains potential. A huge part of Rogers growth in the past was due to the wireless division. The loss of the IPhone monopoloy and the increasing impact of new wireless competitors mean the glory days of Rogers wireless growth are over. The latest financials show ARPU is down and CHURN is up - both negative metrics. The last bastion of Rogers wireless growth is their continuing ability to add lucrative smartphone (IPhone) users even after the loss of their monopoloy. If Steve Jobs and Apple ever release a model of the IPhone that supports the AWS spectrum then even that highly profitable niche will be greatly diminished.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

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Robbers has announced a special deal for paygo customers: Pay $100 and your service will be extended for one year without any aditional talk time. Huh? I pay $100 and get no talk time added?

What do you think I am? Numerically challenged? Stupid? No wait! Maybe just a loyal Robbers customer who knows they will not screw me over. Right?
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Bylo Selhi »

[url=http://warrenkinsella.com/2010/11/rogers-post/]Warren Kinsella on his blog[/url] yesterday wrote:I just got helped out by a person named Jazzmine at the Rogers outlet at the Eaton’s Centre.

She was awesome. Don’t lose this person, Rogers.

There. First nice post about Rogers customer service ever.

UPDATE: I posted this too soon.  Get this: I needed a Blackberry to replace the old one.  Simple.  They told me I needed to put a new SIM card in it.  Simple? Not for Rogers! I deal with “customer service” about a half-dozen times – I’m listening to their Muzak as I type this – and the idiots have summarily removed service from my iPhone, the old Berry and the new one.  They’ve even reassigned my phone number somewhere.

You can’t make this up if you tried.  Oh, and I take back everything I said.  Rogers sucks.
P.S. I'm going to have to start blogging and twittering about lousy customer service. Look how well it worked for Warren [scroll down to RogersElise on November 26, 2010 at 12:08 pm] :shock:
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by mpav »

I just dealt with Rogers (moving house, changing packages) and the dudes were fantastic. Really easy.

The service view of Rogers/Shaw and other telco's is an interesting one as I dont see much of it in shareholder meetings/analysis....but boy do some people hate the companies.

Remember when bank bashing was huge(er)? Not sure what actually changed, but likely not much on the bank side but rather public perception....or they just got clients to become shareholders.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by ghariton »

mpav wrote:Remember when bank bashing was huge(er)?
Thanks for reminding me. Before that it was the railways (insert joke about the Prairie farmer and the CPR). And we all love Air Canada.

Interestingly, foreign ownership restrictions apply to all these companies. After all, they are "strategic" to Canada. I have wondered what that meant. Now I know -- they are leaders in screwing the Canadian public, and we don't want no interlopers messin' things up.

I guess that getting screwed by your own feels better. :roll:

And oh, yeah, they all have their special dedicated regulator. Ain't regulation grand? :twisted:

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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by adrian2 »

kcowan wrote:Robbers has announced a special deal for paygo customers: Pay $100 and your service will be extended for one year without any aditional talk time. Huh? I pay $100 and get no talk time added?

What do you think I am? Numerically challenged? Stupid? No wait! Maybe just a loyal Robbers customer who knows they will not screw me over. Right?
I've actually taken the deal last year and will do again this year. I'm paying $10 per month on my prepaid Fido and have accumulated over $400 at one point; this way I'm keeping the service with no additional money.

You can interpret the $10 monthly outlay (33 minutes @ 30 cents per minute) as $7 system access fee for a month and $3 worth of airtime (30 minutes @ 10 cents a minute). So their deal is to have 12 more monthly access fees for $100 -- not so outrageous as it appears initially.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Hammerer »

kcowan wrote:Robbers has announced a special deal for paygo customers: Pay $100 and your service will be extended for one year without any aditional talk time. Huh? I pay $100 and get no talk time added?

What do you think I am? Numerically challenged? Stupid? No wait! Maybe just a loyal Robbers customer who knows they will not screw me over. Right?
One trick I used before, which may or may not be true today, for an emergency cell phone:
Get a US SIM card.
T-Mobile used to have a deal where any prepaid credit you added was good for 1 year. The "roaming" rate in Canada was 59c/minute, not great, but if you're never going to use it (and can always add credit with a credit card), it works out nicely. It had the added convenience of working cheaply in the USA: 10c/min in the USA for calls anywhere in the USA. Most Canadian prepaid plans didn't even permit prepaid coverage in the US, and even now, it's in the $x/minute range.

In other news: Rogers in talks to buy MLSE (ie: Raptors, Leafs + TFC).
Somewhat makes sense: build a moat with moatable content, and live sports where users have an embarrassingly inelastic demand for its product, makes for a good moat relatively immune from BitTorrent and the like.
I'm sure Teachers won't let it go without a premium though, no doubt they'll shop far and wide for the highest bidder, but it's probably worth the most in Rogers' or Bell's hands.

I think the carriers are overvaluing the worth of sports content on smartphones for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, sports is probably the least compressible content due to its fast action and need for high resolution, and I think people can miss a game if they're not in front of a TV/computer. I don't think that many people listen to games on the radio while they're stuck in car just so they don't miss any action. It's pretty rare for me to observe someone watching a downloaded TV show on their device either.

I could only imagine the battery drain from not only decompressing video for hours, but also receiving it full-stream over the network.

Scratch that: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... le1820071/
The Globeandmail really needs to stop rewriting their articles online as if they're wikipedia articles. You can't just publish rumour, and then rewrite it entirely as an "update".
Fun with Globeandmail URLs:
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... le1820071/
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by timbr »

Apologies in advance for getting off topic.
Before taking the $100 Rogers offer, have a look at Speakout wireless. It's the best deal going for an emergency cell phone that I've come across. They use the Rogers network, so no downgrade in coverage. The only monthly fee is the 911 fee. Airtime lasts for one year, and existing airtime is extended when you add more. For $25/yr, you can keep an emergency phone.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Keithm »

If Rogers takes out MLSE how will the market veiw this?
Rogers has a gag order on this subject company wide. Talk, your fired.
Well known fact that Keith Pelley is not a fan of Peddie. Interesting that he has announced his departure from MLSE.
BCE and Shaw????
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

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Globe & Mail:
Rogers Communications Inc. is leapfrogging its competitors to launch the next generation of high-speed wireless technology in four major Canadian cities by the end of the year, promising that Internet access on mobile devices will be as fast as on home and office computers.

Canada’s major telecommunications companies have been racing to lay the groundwork for the faster networks, known as Long Term Evolution (LTE), which can quickly stream video and other data-heavy wireless traffic.

Telus Corp. has said it will launch the service in 2012. BCE Inc., which owns phone giant Bell Canada, is running test trials in Montreal and Hamilton, but has not yet announced roll-out plans for the service. But Rogers appears to have jumped ahead of its rivals, however, with its announcement Wednesday that LTE will be available in four cities by the end of 2011.
Relevant to TELUS and BCE threads as well.

If LTE is really one tenth as good as its hype, it may replace landline Internet or at least take away a big chunk of its market. And, once Bell and TELUS get their act together, combined coverage would extend to over 95% of Canadians. So why do we need massive subsidies to roll out landline Internet access?

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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Bylo Selhi »

ghariton wrote:If LTE is really one tenth as good as its hype, it may replace landline Internet or at least take away a big chunk of its market.
It also has to be at least one tenthten-thousandth the price of other wireless alternatives. (IIRC Robbers charges as much as $40,000 per GB for wireless Internet via 3G :( )
And, once Bell and TELUS get their act together, combined coverage would extend to over 95% of Canadians. So why do we need massive subsidies to roll out landline Internet access?
What subsidies? (Or do you mean to the 5% of Canadians in rural locations who aren't among the 95% to whom LTE would be accessible? ;) )
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

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Bylo Selhi wrote:It also has to be at least one tenthten-thousandth the price of other wireless alternatives. (IIRC Robbers charges as much as $40,000 per GB for wireless Internet via 3G :( )
Yes indeed. We techies :wink: often concentrate on functionality and forget about price.

I think that the costs (to the supplier) will be low enough. The question is whether those low costs will be passed on via low prices. Here, in my humble opinion, the key is vigorous competition and an end to "rational" pricing, as the mobile industry has called their practices in the past. We really, really need to end restrictions on foreign ownership.
What subsidies?
Many advocates, who should know better, say that wireless broadband is not good enough and never will be, or at least not for the foreseeable future. They argue for building out fiber, etc, to islands and mountaintops and remote hoseholds and so on. It's hard to cost this out, but the U.S. experience suggests an average of $30,000 per household passed (and not every household will subscribe).

By contrast, using LTE should be much cheaper. We don't have any numbers on LTE costs in rural areas yet, of course, but I would guess $1,000 for every household which already has mobile coverage at lower speeds (no need to build the towers, etc) and $5,000 for those who don't (the 5%).

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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Hammerer »

ghariton wrote: Many advocates, who should know better, say that wireless broadband is not good enough and never will be, or at least not for the foreseeable future. They argue for building out fiber, etc, to islands and mountaintops and remote hoseholds and so on. It's hard to cost this out, but the U.S. experience suggests an average of $30,000 per household passed (and not every household will subscribe).
George
Verizon's costs are ~$1000 per home passed, but that's not going to be any fringe areas. It's thought that fibre is comparable in cost to twisted-pair and coaxial, so for some remote areas that have nothing but a poor twisted-pair telephone line, a business case could be made for upgrading/overbuilding with fibre to provide high quality phone service, data and TV.

LTE is senseless for fixed wireless (ie: home/business internet) given what the spectrum and new equipment are going to cost. In rural areas, and even some urban, wireless ISPs can, and often do, already provide a reasonable product using licensed or unlicensed frequencies (and the equipment has become dirt-cheap), with their primary problem often being getting decent pricing on internet connectivity rather than the last mile. It's not unheard of for rural wireless providers to have to build out a series of $$$ point-to-point wireless links to a city with cheap connectivity, even though incumbents have fibre backhauls running along most rail and inter-city road right-of-ways.

More and more phones have wifi builtin (the BB Torch is sensible enough to only download podcasts while you're connected through wifi). Wifi is becoming more and more ubiquitous at work/home/stores/cafes/restaurants/friends. I'm having more and more difficulty seeing why we need higher speed "mobile" data at premium prices, my need for it goes down year over year.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by zinfit »

As the telcos have basically completed fiber to home they now have an advantage on bundled services. I do believe BCE is in the strongest position because of their ownership of some key content providers. Their current CEO seems to be doing a better job then the guy he replaced.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

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zinfit wrote:As the telcos have basically completed fiber to home they now have an advantage on bundled services. I do believe BCE is in the strongest position because of their ownership of some key content providers. Their current CEO seems to be doing a better job then the guy he replaced.
Uhhhh, what fibre to the home? Perhaps you were confusing fiber to the home with FIBe, which is merely VDSL2 over existing telephone lines? Coaxial plant running DOCSIS3 is better than VDSL2 over twisted pair under more real-world conditions, less costly to operate too.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Shakespeare »

Off ~$1.70 now, traded down to $35.89, based on bad results yesterday.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Taggart »

Rogers: Nice dividend, risky stock price

JOHN HEINZL
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, May. 01, 2012 5:59PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, May. 02, 2012 6:31AM EDT

---------------------------------------------------

Note: Still own shares in Rogers but keeping a close eye on it.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by mpav »

Article is a bit late no?

I owned the stock for years, and it has been in a mid 30 range for a while now. I think everyone will agree the great dividend increases of the past are behind them.

But still throws of huge amounts of cash, and while margins are compressing and marketshare is under threat. I still see them as one of the winners in the telco space in Canada. So if expecations are appropriate, still think the company is solid.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Taggart »

mpav wrote:
But still throws of huge amounts of cash,
Heck, that's what I kept arguing as YLO went down.....and down......until now it's just a penny stock. Still lots of free cash flow though. :thumbsup:
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Taggart »

More bad news from Rogers. Time for investors to bail out? :o

----------------------------------------

Rogers to cut up to 1,000 jobs as revenue pressures mount: Sources

Financial Post

Jamie Sturgeon Jun 26, 2012 – 9:15 AM ET
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by mpav »

Taggart wrote:
mpav wrote:
But still throws of huge amounts of cash,
Heck, that's what I kept arguing as YLO went down.....and down......until now it's just a penny stock. Still lots of free cash flow though. :thumbsup:

The yellowpages business model/competition is what killed it. If you think the Roger's or other telco's business model is flawed or that segment will be side swiped by external competitors....absolutely get out.

I dont know many people on this board that were buying in YPL as it was going down, many here saw the flaw.

Rogers is and will have a tough time over the next three years due to increased competition and their big competitors getting their act together. I think they will retool and scratch back marketshare.

Similar to BCE....they were a dog for half a decade at least, and pulled it together and now are a darling.

In the end I own RCI, Telus, SJR and have done well from income and cap gains....only when I think too much do I start to lose money.
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Re: Rogers Communications (Symbol-RCI.B)

Post by Keithm »

Rogers just bought the Score for 167 million.....$1.62 per share. It traded today at $1.73 ??? Are people buying to get in on the Digital company that they will spin out before the deal closes in October?
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