Windstream Corporation
(
WIN
) has announced hiring plans for its Matthews call center. The
company will hire approximately 100 employees to the customer
service team for serving residential customers apart from working
for the call center's internal sales and small business sales
group.
The company will conduct a job fair on August 22, to recruit
suitable candidates. It will offer an average base salary range of
$30,000 to $35,000 along with commission and other perks.
We believe that the new hirings by the company stems from its
increased business volume. We believe that after the acquisition of
PAETEC Holding Corp., Windstream has witnessed considerable growth
in its broadband business, leading to increased need of backend
customer support.
Despite the declines in the wholesale enterprise business, the
company remains focused on its efforts to expand service offerings
to businesses with VoIP services, data bundles, cloud and managed
services, data center services, and fiber transport, and growth
distribution channels.
With demand growth and contract wins, the company continues to
invest in long-term growth initiatives such as fiber-to-the-tower
deployment, data center expansion and broadband network capability
to support incremental revenue and gain an advantage over its peers
like
Frontier Communications
(
FTR
).
All these developments have ultimately resulted in more manpower
requirements. Consequently, we expect the company to add more
employees in the near term.
However, we remain concerned that this increased hiring may
further stress its existing highly leveraged balance sheet. The
company's ongoing acquisitions to expand its coverage markets and
subscriber count are vital to its survival in an industry which is
undergoing consolidation.
The acquisitions have strained the balance sheet, as the company
is predominantly funding most of them through debt. However,
Windstream expects to bring down its leverage ratio to historical
levels of 3.2-3.4 times from the current 3.7 times through EBITDA
growth and debt reduction.
We are currently maintaining our long-term Neutral
recommendation on Windstream supported by a Zacks #3 Rank
(Hold).
FRONTIER COMMUN (FTR): Free Stock Analysis
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