Cingular/AT&TW merger is good news - for Nextel

Nextel Communications hailed the proposed USD41 billion merger between Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless, announced earlier this week, as good news, as it expects to pick up a sizeable proportion of disgruntled customers from both companies. Nextel’s chief executive Timothy Donahue said the deal presented a ‘significant upside for Nextel’ as the company was ‘uniquely positioned’ to pick up customers willing to spend more on mobile services. The CEO’s comments came after Nextel released an impressive set of results for the fourth quarter, including a 29% hike in revenues to USD3.01 billion. Net profit for the quarter was down to USD637 million, or USD0.56 per share, from USD1.46 billion a year ago, but on the upside the carrier added 553,000 subscribers in the period to end the year with 12.9 million users. Nextel has upped its profit forecast for 2004 to USD2 per share and said it expects to sign up an additional 1.8 million customers, excluding those to its recently launched Boost Mobile service, which is targeted at younger users.