I'm not good at reading these reports but here is my two cents:
They exceeded the 300K additional new units (by 22,200) that we were hoping and have now exceeded the million unit mark -- very good
Monthly ARPU (average revenue per digital unit in service) increased to approximately $70 -- good ($75 would have been very good)
The street expected -$1.19 eranings per share and they came in -$1.26 or -$1.09 (after adjusting for non-cash charges related to preferred stock dividends and a reduction in the tax rate)-- I don't know which number the $1.19 compares to (can someone help with this please?)
[$1.26 includes charges of approximately $0.07 per share for international operating activities; a non-cash charge of $0.05 per share for cumulative preferred dividends; and a decreased income tax benefit of $0.05 cents per share]
What jumped at me, in today's ultra global sensitive market, is Nextel's international operations and degree of vulnerability in those markets -- so, even great numbers will naturally fall on deaf ears of nervous institutional investors who are recently valuing stocks based on degree of foreign exposure.
While this exposure doesn't make me run to sell, I can see how people will be reluctant to put new money in a stock that's exposed to economy of Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines and Shanghai, China. Currently everyone's focused on SEA and to some degree on European markets, we need to keep our eyes on S. America as well.
It's interesting that the WSJ article came out on the same day they announced. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but, it sounds like they're reducing the impact of their foreign exposure risk with the news that they're entering the consumer market locally. (BTW, I think they'd delayed to close the Pittencrieff deal.)
Can someone please tell me, if Nextel has actually started to draw revenue from its international markets, or when they plan to do so? How much of the international revenues is reflected in their 98 earning estimates? Let's gauge this vulnerability. |
