LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Alltel Corp. posted strong second quarter results with plusses and minuses in all the right places.
The industry’s No. 5 carrier improved its average revenue per user, substantially cut its overall and postpaid churn rate, and increased revenue from its wireless segment by 28 percent compared with the year-ago quarter.
The quarterly filing will be Alltel’s last as a consolidated company; the carrier spun off its wireline unit and merged those operations with landline company Valor Corp. earlier in the quarter.
Alltel added 146,000 net subscribers during the quarter, including 124,000 postpaid customers and 22,000 prepaid customers. The carrier also added around 112,000 customers through its acquisitions of First Cellular of Southern Illinois and Virginia Cellular. Comparatively, Alltel added about 54,000 net customers in the second quarter of 2005, although with acquisitions that number went up to about 266,000 subscribers. Alltel pushed its postpaid churn rate down 7 percent compared with the year-ago quarter, to 1.47 percent. Total churn was down by 4 percent to 1.91 percent for the second quarter of this year.
Alltel’s ARPU crept up by 4 percent year-over-year to $52.54; $3.26 of that was data revenue, a 61-percent increase. Data revenue now makes up more than 6 percent of Alltel’s ARPU.
Alltel’s wireless revenue was $1.9 billion, up 28 percent from the year-ago second quarter. Wireless service revenues were up 26 percent, and the company’s consolidated profits increased 7 percent to about $429 million.
Alltel ended the quarter with just over 11 million wireless customers.
