Wall Street cheers Dobson’s quarter

Dobson Communications Corp. reported solid quarterly results for the final period of 2006, growing its subscriber base and increasing its average revenue per user.
Dobson ended the year with an ARPU of $49.92-an increase of $3.82 year-over-year. The data portion of Dobson’s ARPU also increased, jumping from $2.90 in the fourth quarter of 2005 to $5.11 in the fourth quarter of 2006. Dobson’s roaming revenue increased 10.6 percent from 2005’s fourth quarter to $70.1 million.
Investors cheered Dobson’s results, sending the carrier’s stock up more than 5 percent to $9.65 per share.
Dobson’s churn rate plunged from 2.62 percent in the last quarter of 2005 to 1.84 percent in the same quarter of 2006, a decrease of almost 30 percent. The carrier added 28,100 net new subscribers during the quarter, consisting of 15,100 postpaid customers, 16,100 prepaid customers, and a loss of 3,100 resellers. Dobson had reported a net loss of 22,500 net customers, most of them postpaid, during the fourth quarter of 2005. Dobson now counts about 1.45 million subscribers.
At the close of 2006, 89 percent of its subscriber base and 93 percent of its postpaid minutes were carried by its GSM network, up from 67 percent and 72 percent, respectively, for the end of the previous year.
The carrier reported operating revenue of $247 million for the quarter, up from $215 million in the previous year. The fourth quarter has “essentially break-even results,” with a net loss applicable to common shareholders of $10,000. Dobson reported a loss of about $27,000 during the same period in 2005.