Alltel Corp. last week expanded its wireless reach with a definitive agreement to buy Liberty Cellular Inc., a privately held company operating under the name Kansas Cellular.
Liberty, based in Salina, Kan., offers wireless, paging, long-distance and Internet services throughout Kansas.
Terms of the agreement call for the stock of Liberty and its affiliate KINI L.C. to be exchanged for 7 million shares of Alltel common stock. The transaction, which will be accounted for as a pooling-of-interests, is valued at about $600 million, according to the companies.
Liberty’s wireless properties are adjacent to properties Alltel owns in Missouri as well as the markets Alltel is in the process of acquiring from Aliant Communications in Nebraska.
“The merger of Alltel and Liberty Cellular is a natural extension of Alltel’s geographic communications footprint,” said Joe T. Ford, chairman and chief executive officer of the company. “This merger is indicative of Alltel’s strategy of delivering a variety of communications services across its own facilities in geographically focused areas.”
Ford noted Alltel has been involved in more than 260 mergers and acquisitions in the past 30 years, most notably its 1998 acquisition of 360
