Rogers increases dividend, buys back shares

[UPDATE: Rogers Communications Inc. stock dropped 6% Monday, despite the company doubling its dividend, announcing it intends a 15% stock buyback and making a rosy forecast for 2008. Investors are apparently skittish about a decline in the uptake of wireless services, despite Rogers adding 183,000 net new wireless subscribers in the past 6 months.]

Rogers Communications Inc., Canada's largest magazine publisher and second only to Transcontinental Inc. in circulation of consumer magazines, has announced that it is doubling its shareholders' dividend, planning to buy back as much as 15% of its stock and looking forward to a 2008 consolidated revenue of as much as $11.5 billion and a profit in the range of $4 billion.

Of course this is just a forecast but the company's huge wireless, cable and TV enterprise is apparently doing particularly well. Hence the confidence to promise a dividend of $1 a share. The shares were trading at just under $42 this morning.

"Our plan for 2008 strikes a healthy balance between the continued delivery of profitable growth, the return of increasing amounts of our growing free cash flow to shareholders, and the investments that will help assure such growth continues well into the future," said CEO Ted Rogers.