OKLAHOMA CITY-Boosted by strong growth in both service and roaming revenues, Dobson Communications Corp. reported a 16.2 percent year-over-year increase in revenues from $233.8 million during the first quarter of 2004 to $277.8 million this year. Service revenues jumped 13.4 percent from $181.7 million in 2004 to $206.1 million this year, while roaming revenues surged 27 percent from $42.1 million last year to $53.4 million this year.
Dobson noted that roaming revenues increased from 18 percent of total revenues during the first quarter of 2004 to 20 percent of revenues this year, despite a drop in roaming yield from 13.9 cents per minute in 2004 to 13.5 cents per minute this year. The decreased yield was offset by a 23-percent increase in total roaming minutes from 322 million minutes during the first quarter of 2004 to 395 million minutes this year.
Net losses also increased from a loss of $16.5 million during first-quarter 2004, a loss of 12 cents per share, to a loss of $25.4 million this year, a loss of 19 cents per share. The increase was attributed to increased operating expenses and an increase in depreciation and amortization.
Dobson’s stock was trading down more than 7 percent early Tuesday at $1.97 per share.
Dobson previously reported that it lost 18,800 net subscribers during the first quarter of this year compared with the loss of 5,400 customers during the first quarter of 2004. The carrier attributed the increased loss to a surge in postpaid customer churn to 1.9 percent during the first quarter of 2004 to 2.43 percent this year, which more than offset improvements in gross subscriber additions.
Dobson said the mix of its GSM subscribers increased from 26 percent at the beginning of the first quarter to 35 percent at the end of the quarter, and that it ended the first three months of the year with 1.59 million subscribers.
