Clearwire Rises After Fourth-Quarter Sales Beat Estimates
January 25, 2012, 12:54 AM ESTBy Heather Perlberg
(Updates with analyst’s comment in fifth paragraph.)
Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Clearwire Corp., the money-losing wireless broadband provider, advanced after reporting preliminary fourth-quarter sales that doubled, beating analysts’ estimates.
Clearwire gained 2.6 percent to $1.80 at 9:39 a.m. Sales probably jumped to $362 million in the period from $181 million a year earlier, the Bellevue, Washington-based company said today in a statement. Analysts predicted $356.3 million, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The company, which is trying to build out a higher-speed long-term evolution, or LTE, network, said it probably added about 900,000 wholesale customers, for a total of 9.1 million such subscribers during the period. Clearwire may have had 1.3 million retail customers at the year’s end.
The results show there’s still increasing demand for fourth-generation services, Walter Piecyk, an analyst with BTIG LLC in New York, said in a telephone interview.
“There were analysts only a couple a months ago who were talking about the risk that wholesale net additions were going to go to zero, and 900,000 is a far cry from zero” said Piecyk, who has a “buy” rating on the stock.
Clearwire, which has been raising money through both debt and stock offerings to build out its LTE network, said in a separate statement today that it plans to offer $300 million in senior secured notes.
That’s a “positive step for a company whose stock is at this point implying they’re going bankrupt,” Piecyk said. “It’s hard to say that’s the case when they have over $1 billion in cash and potentially another 300 million coming in via debt.”
--Editors: Niamh Ring, James Callan
To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Perlberg in New York at hperlberg@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ville Heiskanen at vheiskanen@bloomberg.net
