Om Malik says Clearwire has filed to go public and is looking to raise as much as $400 million (S-1 Form). Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Securities, Bear Sterns, and Wachovia Capital Markets are the underwriters. Clearwire has raised nearly $360 million so far from backers that include McCaw, Intel Corp., and Bell Canada.
AOL and Clearwire are partnering to offer high-speed wireless broadband access for as low as $25.90 per month.
Clearwire’s IPO prospectus provides a lengthy and detailed look at their broadband wireless business and, as such, provides a wealth of hard numbers and facts. According to the prospectus:
We have the second largest spectrum position in this band [2.495 to 2.690 Gigahertz] in the United States. If all our pending acquisition and lease agreements close, we have spectrum that covers an estimated 157 million people, of which an estimated 90 million people were located in areas where we have enough spectrum depth to launch our services. In our international markets we typically use spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band.
As of March 31, 2006, we controlled enough spectrum in Belgium, Ireland, Romania and Spain to enable the deployment of our wireless broadband services to markets covering an estimated 74 million people. In addition, as of March 31, 2006, our unconsolidated joint ventures controlled enough spectrum in Mexico and Denmark to enable the deployment of our wireless broadband services to markets covering an estimated 51 million people.
We intend to expand NextNet’s portfolio of supported devices to include products like PC Cards, PC Express Module and chip sets installed directly in consumer devices such as PDAs and other portable and mobile devices. We believe we will need these products and supported systems to address customers’ growing preference for greater mobility.
We depend on a single contract manufacturer, Sanmina-SCI, and on a limited number of other third party suppliers, to produce and deliver acceptable, high quality products on a timely basis.
Clearwire has launched wireless high-speed Internet service in 27 metro markets, covering more than 200 cities and towns in Alaska, California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin in the United States, as well as Ireland, Belgium, Denmark (under the Clearwire name with Danske Telecom) and Mexico (via our partner MVSNet).
The firm reported losses of $127M on revenues of $33M in the year ending December 2005.
