Clearwire Reports 1st-Quarter Loss of $71 Million

US based WiMAX operator, Clearwire has reported a first-quarter loss of US$71.1 million, compared with a loss of US$76.4 million a year ago. Sales rose 21% to $62.1 million. The company added 25,000 new subscribers to end the quarter with just over 500,000 customers.

"It is a pivotal time for Clearwire as we begin to significantly scale our operational capabilities, gain merger integration synergies, leverage key partnerships and ramp up our network construction and deployment activities to an unprecedented rate," said William T. Morrow, chief executive officer of Clearwire.

"Our network development work is ramping well as we work toward launching our CLEAR branded mobile broadband services in a number of new markets this year including Atlanta in June, Las Vegas this summer and Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas/Ft. Worth later in the year. We also plan to upgrade our largest existing markets – namely Baltimore, Seattle, Honolulu and Charlotte during 2009," Morrow continued. "Leveraging our robust pipeline of more than 19,000 cell sites under various stages of design and development, we are planning to significantly extend our wireless 4G network enabling us to potentially cover as many as 120 million people with true broadband mobility across 80 cities by the end of 2010."

The company also announced the appointment of three new directors: G. Michael Sievert who will join as Chief Commercial Officer; Kevin Hart who will serve as Chief Information Officer; and Laurent Bentitou who will join as Chief People Officer.

Business Outlook

Clearwire maintained its business outlook for 2009 and 2010, expecting ARPU to be generally sustained over this period of significant development and expansion of its WiMAX network. The Company continues to anticipate that Churn will increase in its pre-WiMAX markets as the Company transitions these networks to mobile WiMAX technology and that CPGA will increase as new markets are launched, consistent with Clearwire's past operating experience.

Clearwire continues to target total net cash spend in the range of $1.5 to $1.9 billion for 2009.

Posted to the site on 14th May 2009