PageMart Wireless Inc., which recently selected Glenayre Technologies Inc. as the primary supplier of its planned nationwide two-way narrowband personal communications network, announced a $10 million net loss for the quarter ended Dec. 30.
The net loss, 25 cents per share, is less than the 1996 fourth quarter net loss of $12.8 million, or 32 cents per share.
The company’s one-way subscriber base increased 36 percent from a year ago to 2.5 million in both the United States and the Caribbean by the end of the year. It added 170,038 subscribers domestically in the fourth quarter alone.
The company’s consolidated operating income for the fourth quarter was $1.1 million, an improvement from the operating loss of $3.4 million for the fourth quarter of 1996.
“We are pleased with PageMart’s continued operating progress and even more so about the opportunities for future growth,” said John Beletic, chairman and chief executive officer of PageMart. “With our just-completed debt offering, PageMart has the capital resources in hand to build a narrowband advanced messaging network that will support increasingly sophisticated messaging services.”
That debt offering of 11.25 percent senior subordinated discount notes yielded about $250 million in gross proceeds, which will be used to fund the buildout of an advanced messaging network nationwide. Glenayre will be the primary recipient of those network funds by providing the ReFLEX 25-based add-on return channel to PageMart’s existing one-way infrastructure.
