Nextel Shares Rise on Subscriber Growth, Revenue Expectations
Reston, Virginia, June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Shares of Nextel Communications Inc., a nationwide wireless phone company that primarily serves business customers, rose as much as 7.5 percent on expectations that the company will add more customers than originally thought this quarter.
Nextel climbed 2 3/16 to 43 1/4 in late trading, after touching a 52-week high of 44 1/8. Harvey Liu, an analyst at CIBC World Markets Inc. who raised his rating to ''strong buy'' from ''buy'' today, said he thinks the company will add 430,000 customers this quarter.
Customers are coming from Fortune 500 companies like American Express Corp. and Andersen Consulting, rather than from the delivery and construction companies that were traditional Nextel customers, Liu said.
''Voice and penetration and the monthly bills holding up from the blue-chip kind of clients'' prompted Liu to boost his rating, he said. Nextel's monthly revenue per customer is about $71, versus the industry average of $39.
Michael Rollins, an analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. who reiterated his ''buy'' rating today, also raised his second- quarter estimates for Nextel. In a research note, Rollins said he expects Nextel to add 425,000 customers, rather than the 395,000 he previously forecast, and to increase per-customer revenue by $1 to $71.60.
Liu said his forecasts do not factor in revenue expected from the data services Nextel plans to sell early next year on its i1000plus phone. Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, recently invested $600 million in Nextel to gain a foothold in the emerging wireless-data market.
''Sports scores and stock quotes only go so far, and they're really going beyond that to Web-based applications,'' Liu said of Nextel. With its ''walkie-talkie'' feature that connects work groups, combined with these new wireless data products, the company is ''trying to make their network so valuable to subscribers that they won't leave.''
Jun/18/1999 15:03
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