Cincinnati Bell Earnings Call Nuggets: Fioptics and Wireless Business Options

Cincinnati Bell Inc (NYSE:CBB) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Fioptics

Frank Louthan – Raymond James & Associates: Can you give us a little bit more breakdown on the CapEx between the various fiber builds, (obtain the) buildings and Fioptics? And I’m just curious from a build perspective on Fioptics, do you have that ramp just quickly you think you can on the build schedule, are you throttling that a little bit; I mean it seems in a year when you’re making some pretty heavy investments, you’d probably want to do that as fast as possible. But just what’s sort of your maximum amount that you can pass and when can we expect to get that other half of the homes that you’re trying to address?

Theodore H. Torbeck – President and CEO: Okay, Frank. We’re going to – from a capital perspective, we’ll spend about – on the consumer side, about $73 million on the consumer and about $13 million on the business side for investment. Again, I think, to ramp up – if you look at the ramp up in consumer, 50 to 75 roughly. It takes – you got to train people and so forth. So, it’s – we’re moving I think as fast as we want to in a controlled fashion. As we’ve mentioned earlier, this product is still relatively new and we got to make sure that we do it the way. So, that’s kind of how we’re focusing on it. Our performance in executing on installs and so forth is also very important.

Kurt Freyberger – CFO: Frank, on the Fioptics, we spent a little less than $50 million this year and so it’s about a $25 million incremental associated with Fioptics. And as Ted mentioned on the business side, there’s probably a $13 million to high-teens close to $20 million type incremental investment that we’re intending to do there as compared to 2012.