INTERNATIONAL
1. Nextel International plans to have an ipo in the future, probably within the next two years (my estimate, not theirs). The reason? To balance out the debt-equity ratio. 10%-20% of NI's stock would be offered in the ipo.
2. Keith Grinstein, CEO of Nextel International, says that sometime after the ipo NXTL will spin off International to existing NXTL shareholders. I'm unclear whether NXTL will retain a piece or not but if I had to guess I would say they would retain some ownership interest for control purposes.
3. Based on a map shown at the meeting, NI is close to having a South American footprint. As I recall, Chili, Columbia, Venezuela and perhaps several other small countries were not covered but with Peru, Brazil and Argentina (about 80% of the continent) publicly in the loop, can the others be far behind?
4. 1000 cell sites will be built out of the U.S. in 1998.
5. Excluding Canada and the U.S., Argentina, Brazil & Mexico are targeted to be the economic engines in the Americas. All three will be up and running by this fall. Sao Paulo, Brazil kicked off yesterday and a $100 arpu is not unreasonable to expect.
6. Sao Paulo expectations are so high that NXTL has ordered a second switch.
7. Besides the government owned telco, Nextel is the only CLEARED wireless competitor in the country.
8. The dual phone for European usage is a mystery to me - not because I don't see the potential for European DC but because I don't know to what extent NXTL will benefit since it doesn't have a European presence. We'll get answers to that question when the time comes. For now all we need to know is that NXTL has not written off Europe.
MISCELLANEOUS
1. Wireless phones, currently 29% of all phone numbers, are expected to grow to 40% of all telephone numbers by 2007.
2. Wireless air time, currently 4% of total air time minutes, is expect to grow to 19% by 2007, a FIVE FOLD INCREASE IN USAGE. That does NOT include DC.
3. 5% of all U.S. wireless phones are digital. So in addition to wireless phones growing, we can also expect migration from analog to digital.
4. I've heard all the discussion about LMDS and I still don't understand it. Frankly, it's several years down the road and by the time we understand how it fits with wireless the stock price will be three digits.
5. After the first minute, AT&T still rounds up to the next minute in their new pricing plan. NXTL has a great tv ad that exploits that too!
CONCLUSION: Is this a great company, or what? The stock price will catch up with the company in due time. In the meantime, decide how much of this company you want to own because it's cheaper today than it will be a year from now.
Arnie |
