I've been following PTEL for about 2 years.
The management team has shown a consistent track record of performance. They have also successfully built a long distance company, which they sold to MCI, and a rural cellular business, which became PowerTel. They sold the Maine portion of their cellular, and are expected to sell their additional cellular properties.
I think this company continues to grow its subscriber base and coverage area and eventually sell to Omnipoint or Western Wireless. Probably Omnipoint. Also, we could see some sort of deal this year with Aerial or Omnipoint for their Florida properties. This would complete PTEL's SouthEast footprint.
Be very careful with Nextel. While it has excellent momentum in terms of price action and subscriber growth, it has major long-term limitations. Nextel has pieced together ESMR spectrum (dispatch radio) to provide PCS service. However, they only have about half the bandwidth of cellular/PCS providers, use a specialized type of equipment made only by Motorola, and use a technology with less capacity than the more common GSM/CDMA/TDMA. Right now the game is subscriber growth, and Nextel is doing as well as the other providers as well a having great analyst support due to their extensive capital raising activity. But, long term this is a cost game, as the service is basically a commodity. Everyone will cut prices to use up their capacity. Unfortunatly, Nextel will have the highest cost structure in the industry due to the factors stated above. Nextel is on my short list and I am waiting for the industry to shift from subscriber growth to cash flow generation to put the position on.
JMHO, and I hope you get rich on Nextel, but cash out before any trouble. |
