Tuesday was the filing date for Richard Bransons’s Virgin Mobile USA Inc. The company is proposing an IPO for up to $100 million in securities sales, although this number can change as initial filings often include a mere token amount purely for filing purposes.
Sprint Nextel (S-NYSE) and Branson’s Virgin Group will own two different classes of stock, which will make this deal that much more complicated. Terms were not disclosed, but it will have the ticker "VM" on the New York Stock Exchnage. Underwriters have been listed as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Banc of America.
2006 revenues grew more than 10% from 2005 to roughly $1.1 Billion, although it still posted losses of $36.7 million. Its most recent subscriber date in 2007 showed some 4.88 million customers of prepaid wireless.
This will compete directly with Leap Wireless (LEAP-NASDAQ) and the filing comes two weeks on the heels of MetroPCS Communications Inc. (PCS-NYSE) IPO. Despite the dual stock class and the tie-up of being locked into a borrowed network from Sprint, anything tied to Richard Branson seems to get its fair share of publicity.
Jon C. Ogg
May 2, 2007
Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.
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