Rural wireless operator Ntelos continued to buck the trend among many of its larger rivals in adding customers across its product offering and riding the general wireless industry wave of increased spending among customers.
The carrier said it added 11,400 net customers during the first quarter of the year, with gains across both its postpaid and prepaid offerings. That growth was a strong improvement compared with the 6,800 customers the carrier added during the first quarter of 2012, with the strongest turnaround coming from postpaid customers where the carrier improved from a loss of 4,800 customers last year to a gain of 3,300 postpaid subscribers this year.
The first-quarter growth was boosted by both an increase in gross customer additions and a dip in churn from 3.1% last year to 2.8% this year. Ntelos also began offering Apple’s iPhone line during the second quarter of last year, which coincides with a gain in postpaid customer growth during every quarter since the launch.
Ntelos ended the first quarter with 451,000 total customers on its network, having added 29,700 customers over the past year.
Those customers also continue to spend more money per month, with average revenue per user increasing $4.97 year-over-year and $1.09 sequentially to $53.87 during the first quarter of this year. That year-over-year growth was driven by an $8.04 increase in postpaid ARPU that offset a slight dip in prepaid ARPU. Ntelos added that data services accounted for $21.86 in ARPU during the first quarter of this year.
The combination of more customers spending more money pushed Ntelos’ revenues up nearly 8% to $119.3 million during the first quarter. However, a corresponding increase in expenses cut net income attributed to shareholders from $7.9 million in 2012, to just under $5.5 million this year.
Ntelos noted that it remained on track to begin rolling out LTE services during the second half of this year, reiterating full-year capital expenditures of between $75 million and $85 million. Ntelos announced late last year plans to rollout LTE services using its 1.9 GHz and 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum bands.
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