Out with a bang: Cingular posts record 2.4 million new customers

Cingular Wireless L.L.C.’s last quarter before being absorbed by parent company AT&T Inc. resulted in a company record 2.4 million net customer additions, up from 1.8 million net adds a year ago and beating analysts’ expectations.
“Our last quarter as a joint venture under the Cingular name was our best ever on a variety of fronts,” said Cingular president and CEO Stan Sigman.
The carrier’s growth was driven in large part by new prepaid subscribers and those gained from its resellers, numbers that made up nearly 1.5 million of its customer additions during the fourth quarter. Cingular’s own prepaid service garnered a record 746,000 customers, and Cingular resellers accounted for another 750,000 subscribers.
Cingular ended the year with 61 million customers.
The carrier cut its churn rate from 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005 to 1.8 percent in 2006; that churn rate was flat sequentially. Cingular said its postpaid churn rate was 1.5 percent.
Even with the prepaid mix, Cingular increased its average revenue per user year-over-year from $48.86 during the fourth quarter of 2005 to $49.29 last year. ARPU was down slightly however from the $49.76 the carrier recorded during the third quarter of 2006. Cingular’s data ARPU was strong, increasing 53 percent from the year-ago quarter and 14 percent sequentially to end up at $7.19, or nearly 15 percent of the carrier’s total ARPU.
Cingular’s net income soared to $782 million, a 283-percent increase from the $204 million that the carrier reported during the fourth quarter of 2005. The number was down though from the $847 million Cingular reported in the third quarter of 2006. The carrier’s profits for the year were about $2.5 billion, a significant increase from the $333 million posted for 2005.
Cingular’s total revenues jumped more than 10 percent from the same quarter last year, and increased nearly 9 percent for the full-year 2006 compared with the full-year 2005.
AT&T’s. stock was up more than 3.5 percent on the news.