-The high purchase price for VoiceStream raises questions about how Deutsche Telekom--and others that follow suit--will recoup the acquisition costs. After all, the German communications company would need to collect an average of $75 per month from each of VoiceStream's 2.29 million customers for nearly 25 years to break even.
For example, the $22,000 per customer for VoiceStream dwarfs the $3,000 to $5,000 per subscriber that cable operators were getting recently when consolidation in the cable industry was at its height roughly 18 months ago.
But analysts say the immense potential for growth of wireless services, and the higher profit margins they garner, make premium wireless acquisition prices easier to swallow.
"We are seeing higher revenue per subscriber than we saw a few years ago now that carriers are bundling long-distance and buckets of minutes," said Elliott Hamilton, a senior telecommunications analyst at Strategis Group.
"DT is buying subscribers, but they're also buying the potential subscribers in the U.S.," Hamilton said. "People see so much growth that current subscriber levels may not be the best way to measure these deals."
POP numbers
Many analysts, including Ric Prentiss of Raymond James & Associates, believe a better metric is the price per "POP," or the total number of people within a wireless carrier's coverage area--all of which are potential customers, theoretically.
With a coverage area and licenses capable of serving more than 220 million people, VoiceStream went for about $265 per potential customer. Comparatively, the Vodafone-AirTouch deal was valued around $339 per potential customer, and the France Telecom-Orange deal went for about $675 per "POP"--both higher than the DT-VoiceStream deal.
Still, on a per-subscriber basis, Deutsche Telekom's bid represents more than $22,000 for each of VoiceStream's 2.29 million customers. In comparison, Vodafone paid approximately $7,000 per subscriber when it acquired AirTouch Communications last year.
"A more usual acquisition price point would be $3,000 to $4,000 per subscriber," Eddie Hold, principal wireless industry analyst for Current Analysis, a market research firm, wrote in a report this week. "Although the cost per subscriber is incredibly high, valuing a company based purely on its current subscriber rates often provides a false impression of a company's worth, as it implies a relatively static growth.
"Contrary to this, VoiceStream is actually growing at a very rapid rate, and therefore, to a great extent, Deutsche Telekom is paying for the potential of the U.S. operator, rather than the present."
According to the Strategis Group, the United States claims a wireless penetration rate of only about 33 percent compared with roughly 60 percent in Europe. That, analysts say, leaves plenty of room for the U.S. wireless market to expand--even double--in the next several years.
http://investor.cnet.com/
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Karlchen_I
: Ich bin heute morgen zu 51,40 Euro ( mit Verlusten) raus, und ich glaube,
tobby
: Ja ja Karlchen, mit einer neuen Telfonbuchse steigt die Aktie auch wieder :)))
BigBroker
: Übernahme der Dt.Telekom gefährdet UMTS Lizenzen NICHT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!