Atlantic takes a jump

Article Excerpt

ATLANTIC TELE-NETWORK $38.82 (Nasdaq symbol ATNI; SI Rating: Speculative) (340-777-8000; www.atni.com; Shares outstanding: 15.2 million; Market cap: $591.2 million) is up over 38% since it announced that it plans to buy more than 800,000 wireless accounts from Verizon Wireless for $200 million in cash. These subscribers are mostly in rural areas of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Idaho. Atlantic is paying just $250 per subscriber. That’s much less than the $1,567 per subscriber that AT&T paid when it bought wireless accounts from Verizon last month. (AT&T’s purchase was also related to the Alltel acquisition.) These new accounts will bring Atlantic’s total number of wireless subscribers above one million, up from 200,000 today, and make it one of the largest wireless carriers in the U.S. Right now, Atlantic gets about 49% of its revenue from its 80% interest in Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T). The rest comes from its wireless interests in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and from small…