Cable & Wireless Jamaica (C&W), which trades as the telecom LIME, more than halved its net loss to $303 million in the June first-quarter 2015 as its customer base and usage grew, unaudited financials indicate.

Despite the loss, the company continued to generate more cash as it virtually doubled its earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation to $1.36 billion from $748 million a year earlier.

The telecom is showing “steadily” improving results, according to Garfield Sinclair, chief executive of Cable & Wireless Jamaica Ltd, in his notice to shareholders accompanying the results.

“This is reflected in the performance across virtually all lines of business. Our mobile business continued to lead the way with our prepaid subscriber base growing twice as fast and our post-paid subscriber base growing three times as fast as the prior year’s first quarter,” he stated later, explaining that mobile subscribers grew by 17 per cent and mobile revenues grew by 27 per cent.

Sinclair’s numbers concur with statements made in July by LIME’s regional parent Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) in a release. The LIME financials avoided disaggregating the actual size of the local subscriber base. However, the CWC annual report indirectly gave the size of the Jamaica mobile network at more than 820,330 subscribers based on revealing the local growth in numbers and as a percentage up to March 2015.

LIME Jamaica recorded a 13 per cent rise in revenues year on year at $5.4 billion for the quarter. The loss-making company as at June 2015 held $33.5 billion in net liabilities based on $30.2 billion in total assets and $52.6 billion in total liabilities.

In November 2014, CWC announced an agreement to acquire Columbus International for US$3.025 billion, which was completed on March 31, 2015. Sinclair indicated this week that the integration process remained smooth, thus far.

“The integration process between the two companies is progressing according to plan and will ultimately result in the island’s first and only true, island wide quad-play service provider,” stated Sinclair, adding that customers will be able to access mobile, Internet, fixed voice and TV services.

For a number of years CWC subsidiary operations in the Caribbean traded under the name LIME. But following the merger with Columbus Communications, the consumer business of LIME will in future trade under the name Flow.

“We are very excited about the imminent launch of our new customer and business brands Flow and C&W Business, respectively,” stated Sinclair.