UCaaS, SD-WAN Demand Help Drive Windstream’s Q1 Revenue

**Editor’s Note: Read our list of 20 top UCaaS providers or our list of 20 top SD-WAN providers offering products and services via channel partners.**

Windstream Thursday reported a $121 million loss, and $1.45 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2018.

That compares to a $111.3 million loss, and $1.36 billion in revenue and sales for the same quarter in 2017. The company expects improved revenue through this year compared to 2017.

“Customer demand for strategic services, including UCaaS and SD-WAN, continued to grow and represented almost 40 percent of total enterprise sales during the quarter,” said Tony Thomas, Windstream’s president and CEO. “Our recent network investments also have driven meaningful improvements in our broadband subscriber trends with March representing our best performance in more than five years.”

Strategic sales (SD-WAN, UCaaS and on-net) reached a record high percentage during the quarter. In March alone, strategic sales totaled 45 percent of Windstream Enterprise’s sales.

Service revenue was $1.43 billion in the quarter, compared to $1.34 billion for the year-ago quarter. Consumer and small business ILEC service revenues were $471 million, a 5 percent decrease from the year-ago quarter.

Enterprise service revenue was $733 million in the first quarter, up 13 percent from the year-ago quarter.

Wholesale service revenue was $184 million, a 3 percent increase from a year ago.

CLEC consumer service revenue, which mostly consists of EarthLink’s consumer internet business, was $48 million, up 131 percent from the year-ago quarter.

“Total cash costs improved by more than 6 percent year-over-year, driven in part by our IT integration work, as well as our continued focus on reducing network interconnection expenses and driving improvements in our overall organizational effectiveness,” Thomas said.