Rural telco CenturyTel Inc. (CTL), which is buying smaller rival Embarq Corp. kept its head above water in the fourth quarter of 2008, despite thousands of access line losses.
The service provider made $87 million between October and December on revenue of $646.2 million. That’s all a slight drop from year-earlier results, when CenturyTel posted $89.2 million in profit in 2007’s final quarter and $657.8 million in sales.
Still, CenturyTel beat Wall Street estimates. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting revenue of $642.8 million.
