Hi, Rob, glad to hear you were able to buy more shares since you said you wanted to do that. I still can't believe it's just the two of us on this thread, although the number of lurkers is always unknown. This seems to me to be such a no-brainer investment. Everyone else must be off chasing a gerzillion percent run-up on the latest mo-mo pick.
Do you follow any of the other Latin American telecoms? I used to follow Telebras a bit, before the privatization, but they're off my radar screen now. I think I will read a bit about Telefonica itself, after seeing this latest news item about their tender offer. I've read a number of positive articles about them over the years. They seem to have a strong and thriving business.
Meanwhile, in Mexico City Pegaso had a strong Christmas season, so I'm thinking Iusacell did, too.
All the best from rainy Seattle.
Monday January 10, 6:01 pm Eastern Time
Pegaso shines in Mexico City cellphone launch
By Fiona Ortiz
MEXICO CITY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Booming Christmas sales gave Mexican wireless phone company Pegaso PCS a successful launch in Mexico City's competitive mobile phone market, the company said Monday.
Pegaso grabbed up 50,000 customers in Mexico City in the three weeks after its Dec. 9 launch, and closed the year with a total of 111,707 clients in the four Mexican cities where it operates, strategic communications chief Roberta Lopez-Negrete told Reuters in an interview.
Pegaso -- 51 percent held by Grupo Pegaso and Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa (NYSE:TV - news), and 28.6 percent owned by U.S. company Leap Wireless International Inc. (NasdaqNM:LWIN - news) -- competes in the capital with Mexico's two biggest cellphone companies, Telcel, a unit of dominant phone operator Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex)(NYSE:TMX - news), and Iusacell (NYSE:CEL - news).
Mexico's overall cellular market has grown explosively, with mobile phone subscribers growing more than 100 percent in 1999.
Lopez-Negrete said Pegaso gave the competition a run for their money in December, accounting for 40 percent of the mobile phones sold in Mexico City during that month. Sales outstripped Pegaso's own projections, and the company at one point ran out of its cheaper handsets, she said.
Pegaso, which promotes itself as Mexico's only fully-digitalized cellular phone service, launched mobile phone service in Mexico City in December with 230 antennas covering the entire metropolitan area, where 18-20 million people live.
Lopez-Negrete said that within the next few weeks the company would fill in pockets and gaps in Mexico City service -- areas where its signals still do not reach or where the system is saturated -- by adding signal repeaters and fiber optic cable infrastructure to reinforce its network.
She said Pegaso would not need to add any antennas beyond the ones the company already has in place in Mexico City.
Pegaso projects more than 300,000 subscribers by the end of the year in Mexico, and expects to grab more than 20 percent of the Mexican market, Lopez-Negrete said.
The spokeswoman said that within three months, Pegaso would complete a deal to sell a 30.5 percent stake to U.S. firm Sprint Corp. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding in December.
Lopez-Negrete said that Televisa and Grupo Pegaso, a private company owned by major Televisa investor Alejandro Burillo, would continue to control Pegaso.
Lopez-Negrete said service will be available in 18 Mexican cities by December, and nationally by the end of 2001.
She said the company has spent about $750 million of its planned total investment of $1.3 billion to build its Mexico network. She said the rest of the
investment, which she said was fully committed, would be made over the next 18-24 months.
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