U.S. Cellular posts mixed quarterly results

U.S. Cellular Corp. moved closer to catching up with its financial reporting, providing third-quarter 2006 results and selected data from its fourth-quarter 2006 operations.
The company has been going through a series of financial restatements that have delayed the reporting of its quarterly results.
U.S. Cellular said that its customer base grew 8 percent from the third quarter of 2005 to a total of 5.73 million customers at the end of the third quarter of 2006. Of that total, 5.13 million were retail customers. The carrier’s total net customer activations were sharply down in the third quarter, however, at just 25,000 subscribers-about a third of the 76,000 net activations during the third quarter of 2005. Jack Rooney, U.S. Cellular’s president and CEO, said that the sharp drop in the total number was due to a loss of prepaid customers. He said the company signed up 40,000 net postpaid customers during the third quarter.
The carrier reported that its third-quarter average revenue per user was up 4 percent year-over-year to $47.93, and its data revenues boomed 74 percent compared to the year-ago period, to $54.7 million. Postpaid churn was 1.6 percent.
For the fourth quarter of 2006, the company’s customer figures continued to be lower. U.S. Cellular reported 86,000 net customer activations, down from the 125,000 net customer additions during 2005’s fourth quarter. Gross additions fell from 392,000 in the fourth quarter of 2005 to 375,000 in the same period of 2006. Postpaid churn during the quarter fell year-over-year and sequentially to 1.5 percent, from 1.6 percent.
The carrier said it expects to report operating revenue between $890 million to $910 million for the fourth quarter, up from $785 million as restated for the last quarter of 2005.