Clearwire Corp. on Thursday reported better than expected growth for the third quarter of 2011, allowing the company’s stock to increase by as much as 21.5% by midday.
Investors were worried that Clearwire wouldn’t be able to hold onto their customer based as major partner Sprint Nextel Group continued to shift away from their partnership.
According to Clearwire they had acquired 9.5 million customers by the end of September, that number is 1.9 million customers more than they had attracted by the end of Q2 2011.
Clearwire also expects that their revenues increased to $332 million in Q3, a 13% increase quarter-over-quarter while beating analysts expectations by $10 million.
The company now says they are shooting for 10 million subscribers by the end of the year, mostly focused on the wholesale side of their business where nearly 80% of their customer base already exists.
The news of a boost in subscriber services and revenue couldn’t have come at a better time for Clearwire as their stock was trading down by 60% since August. Stock prices plummeted after Sprint announced they would begin building their own fourth-generation technology to compete with Clearwire. Sprint owns half of Clearwire and the company is still locked into a $1 billion deal that runs through 2012.
Next up for Clearwire are plans to build a new 4G network based on the same technology currently being implemented by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless.
The company’s future could be riding on their next generation network development, do you think Clearwire can continue to grow if they can’t reach a sustainable deal with Sprint Nextel Corp?
