Salem Telephone Co
Case Study #2

Overview:
Salem Telephone Company (STC) is a telephone company who is regulated by the state Public Service Commission. The state Public Service Commission encouraged public utilities under its jurisdiction to seek new sources of revenue and profits. This would reduce the need for rate increase that higher costs would otherwise bring. The company formed an agreement with the state Public Service Commission to create a subsidiary. Thus Salem Data Services (SDS) was created to perform data processing for the telephone company and sell computer products and services to other companies and organizations. The separation between the companies is because STC was a regulated utility and SDS is an unregulated company. The only restriction the state Public Service Commission had was the average monthly charges for services provided by SDS to STC is not to exceed $82,000. This was the estimated cost of equivalent services used by STC in the year 2000. With retaining the separation between the two companies all accounts of SDS were separated from STC. Lastly, each company paid the other for services from the other. During April 2004 the president of STC, Peter Flores met with SDS’s manager Cynthia Wu to discuss the condition of the company. SDS currently has yet to have a profitable month, but Wu feels the company is progressing well and needed more time to show profits. This raised a concern for Flores. Also, in 2003 STC’s income was at an all-time low, this too caused Flores to reassess SDS. Flores used the information from SDS Summary of Computer Utilization and SDS Summary Results of Operations First Quarter 2004 reports. The reports for the quarter revealed a constant problem; the hours still available to sell did not provide revenue remained high. In addition, some expenses had different characteristics. For example: Space Cost