Cingular Wireless reported its highest-ever net income of $847 million, a year-over-year increase of over 280 percent on total revenues were $9.6 billion, up 9.2 percent over revenues for the year-ago quarter and 3.6 percent compared to the second quarter of 2006.
Some highlights for Q3 2006:
- Cingular ended the third quarter of 2006 with 58.7 million cellular/PCS subscribers, tops among U.S. carriers and a year-over-year increase of 6.4 million.
- ARPU increased to $49.76. This compares to $49.65 in the year-ago quarter and to $48.84 in the second quarter of 2006. Continued growth in data ARPU contributed to this increase in overall ARPU.
- Data ARPU was $6.32, up 46 percent over the year-ago third quarter and up 10 percent sequentially.
- Postpaid churn was 1.5 percent. This is a year-over-year improvement of 50 basis points and flat compared to the second quarter of 2006.
- Overall monthly subscriber churn was 1.8 percent, which represents a year- over-year improvement of 50 basis points and a sequential increase of 10 basis points. The sequential increase resulted from normal seasonality patterns, the sunsetting of AT&T Wireless' prepaid plans, and from certain actions the company took to recover increased costs associated with serving the rapidly diminishing base of its TDMA customers.
- Cingular's net additions were driven by lower churn and strong gross customer additions. The company reported 1.4 million net adds. Cingular's performance in net adds compares to 867,000 in the year-ago quarter and to 1.5 million in the second quarter of 2006. Some 928,000 of the 1.4 million net adds were postpaid customers, marking the company's third consecutive quarter of postpaid net adds nearly at or above the 900,000 level.
- In addition, retail customers represented 87 percent of net adds in the third quarter, which compares to 74 percent in the year-ago quarter and to 75 percent in the second quarter of 2006. Reseller customer net additions were 174,000, which is down from 228,000 in the year-ago quarter and from 380,000 in the second quarter of 2006.
- Capital expenditures were $1.8 billion. These were driven by, among other developments: continued progress in merger integration; ongoing, rapidly accelerating improvements in network coverage and quality; and the continued introduction of Cingular's powerful UMTS/HSDPA 3G.
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