Clearwire Debt Holders & Shareholders Selling Shares (CLWR, INTC, MER, DB)

Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ:CLWR) had a filing after Friday’s close showing shareholder selling stock.  Upon seeing the mere name Clearwire you’d instantly think the company itself was selling more shares or taking on more debt.  It noted time after time that it would need vast amounts of capital above and beyond what it raised in the IPO.

This filing won’t do anything except pay shareholders.  The registration of this is for 14,973,024 shares of Class A common stock issuable on exercise of warrants registered.  It lists the financial tally as $369,683,963.  These shares from selling stockholders are in connection with debt financing transactions in August 2005 and February 2006. At least it looks like they are locked in and havn’t been able to do much with this so far.  The selling stockholders are prohibited from selling, offering to sell, contracting or agreeing to sell, hypothecating, hedging, pledging, granting options to purchase or otherwise disposing or agreeing to dispose, directly or indirectly, of any shares issuable upon exercise of the warrants until the expiration of contractual holdback arrangements on September 3, 2007 or as may be extended under the terms of the registration rights agreement.

One of the selling holders is Merrill Lynch Capital Corporation, a Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER) affiliate.  It is selling 1,900,000 shares and will still own 1,298,126 shares after this sale.  Another of the selling stockholders, Middlefield Ventures, Inc., or Middlefield, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel (NASDAQ:INTC).  Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB), London Branch is selling 2,133,334 million shares and will only hold 275,333 shares after this sale.  The rest is essentially all money management firms and hedge funds that are being sold.

Jon C. Ogg
August 18, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not hold securities in the companies he covers.