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Prestige Telephone Company case study

In 1999, the Government encouraged public utilities to seek new sources of revenues and profits to reduce the need for rate increases to consumers of telephone services.

Prestige Telephone Co. (PTC) considered that a centralised data provider service could be a profitable use of excess hours from existing infrastructure.

Prestige Data Services (PDS) performed data processing for the telephone company and sold computer services to other companies and organizations.

PTC believed that a profitable subsidiary would reduce pressure for telephone rate increases.

After a number of years of delivering losses, PDS believes that more time should be given and that a profitable business was possible.

The fundamental problem of Prestige Data Services is that they have too many available hours that are not generating revenue. In the first quarter of 2003, they have an average of 176 unused hours per month, based on current charge rates, this represents an opportunity for additional revenue of over $140,000 per month within the existing infrastructure and resourcing structure.

Part a -
Learning outcomes is the understanding of the following in this case study:

• Incremental Cost Analysis – understanding of the change that a company experiences within its balance sheet due to one additional unit of production.
• Return on Investment – how much revenue is earned from the investment PTC has made into the data company
• Opportunity cost – what else could PTC could be doing with the resources being consumed, and would these be used to make a positive return to the company
• Fixed and variable costs – the relationship between revenue earning activities and costs, and
• Contribution analysis – helps understand the sensitivity of profits towards paying for the fixed cost component of the business
• Cost – Volume Profit

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