US mobile broadband services provider Clearwire reported third quarter revenues up 13 percent to USD , pushed primarily by a larger subscriber base.
The provider earlier announced a new USD 1.564 billion round of equity financing, with USD 1.057 billion expected within five business days, USD 440 million by the end of the year, and USD 66 million sometime in the first quarter of 2010. For accounting purposes, the refinancing transaction have been treated as a ‘reverse acquisition’, resulting in the presentation of these results with pro-forma comparisons.
Total subscribers increased to approximately 555,000 at the end of September from 469,000 the year earlier, with net adds at 44,000. Total subscribers in the company's Wimax markets were at 173,000, with net adds here at 49,000. ARPU was at USD 39.71 compared to 39.47 in Q2 and40.43 the year before. The operating loss and OIBDA both widened 33 percent to USD 291.3 million from 219.2 million and to USD 193.8 million from 145.5 million respectively. Capex increased to USD 410 million from USD 129 million the year before, driven by high network expansion activities.
Clearwire expects its fourth quarter capex to again rise sequentially due to a continued ramping of network expansion activities. Net cash spend was USD 504 million for the third quarter. Clearwire ended September with cash and short-term investments at about USD 2.0 billion invested primarily in US Treasury securities.
The provider reiterated its guidance for 2009 and 2010, expecting ARPU to stay at current levels during the development and expansion of its Wimax network. Clearwire is targeting total net cash spend of about USD 750 million in the fourth quarter, or around USD 1.9 billion for the full year. Clearwire also repeated its full year consolidated network coverage target of more than 40 million people by the end of the year, and its target of expanding its CLEAR Wimax network coverage to 120 million people by the end of 2010.