marioc21

The most Dish can get is 25% and they can't give them any special priviledges.

Don't forget the breakup fee if they turned their backs on the deal.  $115 million would be crippling to clearwire.  

Looks like Dish is truly surrendering in the Sprint quest.  They are buying back some of their outstanding notes.  Presumably with the cash they had raised earlier this year.  

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-21/dish-to-abandon-unsolicited-bid-to-acquire-sprint-nextel.html?cmpid=yhoo

Nothing now but to wait for the FCC to give its blessing.

Edit:

Yes, they are redeeming the same debt they issued earlier this year.

 

Dish, in a regulatory statement today, didn’t specify why it was pulling out of the bidding. The Englewood, Colorado-based company said it would redeem $2.6 billion of bonds that it had issued in May in connection with its bid.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-21/dish-abandons-sprint-pursuit-to-pave-way-for-softbank-takeover.html?cmpid=yhoo

Game, set, match. Or is it???

Sprint and Clearwire Agree to Increased Acquisition Offer

Increased Offer to $5.00 Per Share Represents Significant Premium to Unaffected Clearwire Trading Price and DISH Network Tender Offer

 

• Group of Significant Minority Stockholders Agree to Vote in Favor of Sprint Transaction

• Offer Provides Clearwire Stockholders with Certain and Attractive Value

 

 

http://www.businessw...quisition-Offer

Well, I guess that answers that!  They went after the minority shareholders and said "how much do you want?".  Looks like this may finally trumped Dish.

If I'm reading the release right it looks Sprint finally got 45 of the remaining 49% of shareholders to support the deal? Or is 45% of the remaining 49%?  I would assume they meant the former and not the latter.

I thought the board doesn't approve Dish's offer?

They changed their vote after the most recent DISH offer.

What does this mean? To me, it sounds like Dish is backing out of a losing battle.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

Just did a quick search.  The waiting period referenced is part of federal anti-trust law.  The waiting period gives the justice department and the FTC time to decide if they want more information from the parties involved.  This means the waiting period is over and Dish can continue on to the next stage with their proposed transaction.  

So the new Softbank deal sucks. The new deal is $16.6 billion + $5 billion in cash=$21.6 billion for 78% stake. Compare that to the old deal which was $20.1 billion for a 70% stake. 

 

This offer is actually a significantly lower valuation of $27.75 billion now vs $28.88 billion before.

It's the tradeoff for receiving almost a $1.50 more per share in cold hard cash instead of stock in the "New Sprint". 

It doesn't really matter. I could see them merging with the New Sprint, being bought out by the New Sprint, I could also see SoftBank or new Sprint providing more equity funding, or even SoftBank buying out New Sprint's shares in CLWR and keep it to itself.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Would it really matter once Softbank owns both companies?

True enough.  Once Softbank controls both it really doesn't matter. 

Sprint owns 54% of Clearwire, and it now looks like SoftBank will challenge DISH directly for minority control. So SoftBank is not giving up on Clearwire.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

The question then becomes to what end? Once they had enough voting power would they move to merge CLWR into Sprint? CLWR would still need a large cash infusion if they keep it as a separate company.  Would CLWR sign some sort of network sharing deal with Sprint? Lots of questions left.   

Network Vision is fully funded now. All this lost extra "investment" was going to buy Clearwire. It's believed that now Sprint will allow its purchase of CLWR to be defeated and SoftBank will directly fight out DISH for outstanding shares and minority control of CLWR. This has no net effect on Sprint investment funds once you remove paying for CLWR.

 

Additionally, this does nothing for SoftBank giving Sprint more funding after the close of sale either through Sprint issuing SoftBank more equity or SoftBank setting up a credit line for Sprint at better terms than what they can get on the market.

 

No need to fear about the SoftBank decrease in investment. DISH couldn't exercise any of these options and would have to raid capex just to pay its debt. SoftBank has the cash and access to funding that Sprint could only have wet dreams about.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

So in regards to CLWR what you're saying is that ultimately we'd wind up with Sprint owning 51% and Softbank directly trying to obtain as much of the remaining 49% as they could get?   

Where does it say that?

 

For everything I read, all they did was ADD more cash?

I haven't seen anything that says Softbank is pumping less cash into New Sprint.  Only that the offer increases the % of ownership that Softbank will have after it's done.  That moves up to 78% from 70.  And the each sprint shareholder will now get a total of $7.65 per share from the original $7.30.  

And it does so by taking away over $3 billion of investment for Network Vision. Not incredibly happy about that...

How do you figure that?

No sure what this means for the future, but SoftBank is tapping the Japanese savings market again for more low rate debt.  SoftBank is raising another $4.2 billion of cash through bond offerings.  Might just be refinancing debt or could be strengthening the cash reserves for the Sprint/Clearwire deals.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-07/billionaire-son-taps-mrs-watanabe-for-sprint-bid-japan-credit.html?cmpid=yhoo

Looks like the shareholder vote is still set for June 12.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprint-sticks-june-12-vote-softbank-deal-dish-continues-hover/2013-06-05

But there's still a week between now and then.  We'll see what happens. 

Well, looks like Sprint is cranking up the noise.  Not sure if this has any impact on what the minority shareholders are thinking though.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sprint-sends-letter-clearwire-board-130000894.html

 

Sprint Sends Letter to Clearwire Board Calling DISH Proposal for Clearwire Not Actionable and a Violation of Delaware Law

Sprint (NYSE:S) announced today that it has sent a letter to the Clearwire Board of Directors noting that the DISH proposal to acquire Clearwire is "not actionable," as certain provisions violate Delaware law, Clearwire's certificate of incorporation or the rights of the parties to the existing Clearwire Equityholders' Agreement (EHA), including Sprint.

....

No wireless carrier deploys all their spectrum all over a market. It would be a huge waste of money...both on the install and operationally. Someone would need to be fired wasting so much money and resources. And it wouldn't be very green. This is not a Sprint thing. Every carrier deploys only what is necessary.

 

For instance, if Sprint fully deployed 40MHz of spectrum at every site in a market, but 70% of them only needs 10MHz, and 20% need 20MHz, and 7% need 30MHz and 3% need 40MHz...well, you can see how boneheaded that would be. If each 10MHz cost $10k in additional equipment per site and an additional $500 per month in operational costs per site, that would add up quick. All for unneeded capacity.

 

Let's take a market with 1,000 sites. If we added all 40MHz of spectrum to every site, the amount wasted would be $25.7M in equipment and $15.42M every year in operational costs. That is just in one market. It would be billions of wasted dollars over the entire network. Add all these up over the entire Sprint network and they'd be bankrupt in a year or two. That's why no one does this.

 

Given the way AT&T and VZW are beholden to profits, their shareholders would crucify them publicly if they wasted money like this. And there is no value to doing it either.

 

There is one big fact about wireless networks, the load from each site, and each sector of a site is highly variable. Populations are dynamic. And usages by neighborhood are dynamic. What Sprint needs to do is monitor their network closely and deploy additional carriers to more free spectrum before there is a congestion problem. To be ahead of the curve. This is what VZW does. And this is what Sprint will attempt to do much better in a post Network Vision world. And it's something that SoftBank understands well.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Are carriers added to sites on the fly? Or do they require Techs to go out to a tower? Can a carrier be turned on remotely during peak times and then turned off once traffic dies down? Or once it's installed it's up and running all day every day?

Looks like clearance has been given.  Here's the Sprint press release: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sprint-softbank-receive-clearance-committee-113000359.html

Official Sprint press release on CFIUS approval:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sprint-softbank-receive-clearance-committee-113000359.html

Bumping this because there appears to be some news.  According to this fiercewireless article Sprint may indeed be the roaming partner for Cricket. Cricket is planning on selling phones later this summer that support LTE on Band 25 which would be Sprint.  So I guess the phones will support LTE on AWS for Cricket's native coverage areas and then roam onto Sprint for national coverage.

 

Matt Stoiber, Cricket's senior vice president of devices, said that the S4 will support LTE in the AWS bands and Band 25. Sprint uses Band 25 for its existing LTE network on its 1900 MHz spectrum, and Stoiber suggested the S4 will use that network. "We will enable roaming on Band 25 this summer," he said, adding that customers "can roam nationally and use LTE in Band 25." He and other Cricket executives declined to name Sprint as the company's LTE roaming partner; Cricket initially announced the agreement in February. Stoiber said Cricket may look to add support for additional bands in its devices with companies that it has deals with now and with other carriers.

 

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/leap-suggests-its-lte-roaming-deal-sprint-hints-more-device-financing-optio/2013-05-22?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Editor&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

I got a tip today that Sprint will no longer be supporting the original Samsung Airave 1.0 model on or around August 1st.  Can anyone else confirm this?

 

I am not sure if this also includes the Samsung second version Airave with the black antenna but it likely does.  This sucks for me because I have always preferred this version out of the first three models (haven't used the 2.5).  I keep it around for backup for the times when my local cell site goes down with an outage but other than that I don't need it.  I guess once August comes and if they do in fact shut it down then I will have to get a 2.5 model.  I'm sure they would send me one.

So the currently active ones will stop working entirely?  Is Sprint planning to offer free replacements?  

The new vote has been rescheduled again. It is now on May 31 10:30am PT. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clearwire-special-meeting-stockholders-rescheduled-173500875.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/sprint-raises-clearwire-offer-not-141955114.html

 

 

The dude talking $5-$7 is delusional. While it would be good for me financially if that came to fruition, it's not gonna happen. It's just not. Even though this is supposedly their last, best and final offer, I think Sprint may go as high as $4 to get it done, but even that is shaky.

I'll take this as a sign that the new offer price will probably succeed.

 

Crest Financial protests Clearwire vote delay, opposes new bid

 

May 21 (Reuters) - Major Clearwire Corpshareholder Crest Financial on Tuesday said it was opposed to Sprint Nextel Corp's newly raised bid for the company.

Crest also protested Clearwire's decision to postpone a shareholder vote, which had been scheduled for Tuesday. Crest has been soliciting proxies to oppose the deal.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/clearwire-sprint-crest-idUSL2N0E21IT20130521?feedType=RSS&feedName=bondsNews&rpc=43

The official press release from crest: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/crest-financial-protests-clearwires-delay-173300957.html

They must be delusional if they think they can still much more than the new offer.

This wsj story quotes a couple of analysts saying that Sprint/Softbank's latest offer is likely enough to sway enough minority shareholders.  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324102604578496863977600882.html

Maybe an iPhone.  That is likely the only high end Sprint handset that will debut in September.  Otherwise, you are looking more likely at an October to December timeframe.

 

AJ

Isn't it more likely to be mid-range phone like the Viper was? Digiblur is right, it's more likely the iphone won't support tri-band until next year.

The first tri-band LTE devices are coming this summer.  As you could imagine they are wifi hotspots and USB modems from Novatel and Netgear. One of the Netgear devices will operate internationally as well. Although international support appears to be 3g only. 

Press Release: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tri-band-4g-lte-mobile-143000368.html

BTW, the vote has now been rescheduled for May 30 at 9:30am.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clearwire-receives-increased-offer-sprint-130200978.html