CenturyLink Augments Fiber Footprint, Gets NASA's Contract
CenturyLink, Inc. CTL announced its plans to bring fiber to more than 1,000 homes and enterprises in Nessel Township, MN. Residents of this rural area will have access to reliable and high-speed Internet. The Monroe, LA-based communications company’s fiber and IP-based network capacity combined with its financial strength positions it well to support customers and boost shareholders’ value in the long term.
CenturyLink has a significant presence in Minnesota, with more than 17,000 miles of fiber and one million connections. The company’s investments and Minnesota’s Border to Border Broadband Development Grant Program will help meet the state’s goal of extensive broadband service. This public-private partnership project is aimed at providing the fiber and electronics needed for high-speed connections of up to 940 Mbps. It complements other similar projects in Minnesota’s underserved areas, providing more than 3,300 connections since 2014.
CenturyLink is focused on the execution of its strategies that hinges on four key areas — investing in growth through product and network expansions, delivering enhanced customer experience across business, transforming operations to improve efficiency and employee experience as well as deleveraging to strengthen its balance sheet.
In another development, CenturyLink won a second task order from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”) to manage all of its voice traffic. It will provide secure network connectivity to NASA’s more than 15 space centers and regional research facilities. In 2019, the company won the first task order to provide NASA headquarters with core backbone network services with speeds of up to 100 Gbps.
The mission-critical voice and network services will support NASA’s space exploration programs. Both contracts were given to CenturyLink under the General Services Administration’s 15-year, $50-billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions program and have a period of performance of nine and a half years.
Driven by its global fiber network, CenturyLink’s shares have added 14% compared with 5.7% growth of the industry in the past three months. The company has a dividend yield of 10.2% compared with 4.6% of the industry.
CenturyLink currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the broader industry are Turtle Beach Corporation HEAR, Ooma, Inc. OOMA and Acacia Communications, Inc. ACIA, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Turtle Beach has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 46.4%, on average.
Ooma has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 228.2%, on average.
Acacia has a trailing four-quarter positive earnings surprise of 17.7%, on average. The company’s earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the last four quarters.
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