NEW YORK – Cingular Wireless, the mobile venture of SBC Communications Inc. (SBC) and BellSouth Corp. (BLS), said Monday revenue rose in the fourth quarter on strong subscriber growth.
Cingular, which bought AT&T Wireless (AWE) in late October, said revenue rose 1.8 percent to $8.1 billion from the same quarter a year earlier, on a pro forma basis, which assumes it owned AT&T Wireless for the entirety of both quarters.
Cingular added 1.8 million customers in the quarter, also on a pro forma basis.
Excluding AT&T Wireless results from before their deal closed in October Cingular reported an operating loss of $497 million compared with a profit of $16 million a year earlier on revenue of $7.1 billion compared with $3.9 billion last year.
Churn, or the percentage of customers canceling their service, was 2.6 percent compared with expectations for churn of just over 3 percent, according to five analysts polled by Reuters.
Pro forma average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) was $49.67 down 5.8 percent compared with a year earlier.
Cingular said that $2.89 of its ARPU came from data services such as Web surfing and text messaging up from $1.75 in the third quarter before the AT&T Wireless deal.
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