U.S. Cellular Corp. and parent company Telephone and Data Systems Inc. said they plan to further delay filing their third-quarter financial results in order to complete restatements of prior financial reports. Both companies rescheduled the release of their third-quarter results for Nov. 28, but now say they expect to release the results sometime next month, in conjunction with the filing of their amended Forms 10-K and 10-Q.
U.S. Cellular and TDS previously reported plans to restate financial results for the first and second quarters of 2005; full-year results for 2000 through 2004; and all four quarters of 2003 and 2004. The planned restatements are related to both companies’ review of the accounting treatment for Universal Service Fund expenses; leases; contract termination fees; income tax accounting; and other adjustments and accruals, including the recognition of income from certain investments accounted for under the equity method of accounting.
U.S. Cellular and TDS last week received notices from The American Stock Exchange and The New York Stock Exchange indicating that both companies are not in compliance with their respective listing standards. As a result, U.S. Cellular and TDS will be included in a list of issuers-which is posted daily on the AMEX and NYSE Web sites-that are not in compliance with the listing standards. A “.LF” will be added to their trading symbols.
“We regret this further delay in announcing our third-quarter operating results,” said LeRoy Carlson Jr., president and chief executive officer of TDS. “However, we felt it is in the best interest of our investors and other stakeholders to take the time to complete a thorough review of our prior periods and third-quarter 2005 financials before we release our operating results and submit our filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
U.S. Cellular earlier this month offered a handful of preliminary third-quarter results including 77,000 net customer additions, well below the 111,000 subscribers the carrier added last year. The carrier’s postpaid customer churn was 1.5 percent, down slightly from the 1.6-percent churn it posted during the third quarter of 2004. Analysts were expecting the carrier to add between 100,000 and 110,000 customers during the quarter with postpaid churn of between 1.6 and 1.7 percent.
U.S. Cellular’s stock was trading up 4 cents per share to $50.10 last Wednesday. TDS’ stock was up 8 cents per share at $37.36.
