Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Mark DeRussy - Raymond James.
Mark DeRussy - Raymond James
Kurt, as a CEO, on of your jobs is to allocate capital, and in the fourth quarter you really throttled back on investing in the business and reduced your capital structure, and I just want to know if that was more of a tactical flash opportunistic decision or is it a more strategic decision? Are we at a level of site as in the fourth quarter that we should extrapolate into 2009 and are you able to potentially continue to repurchase your converts in the marketplace?
Kurt J. Van Wagenen
In terms of capital allocation, it’s very much a tactical decision. It’s based on our interaction with customers. We continue to believe that we will be adding sites in 2009, but very much on a success basis with a very disciplined rate of return model surrounding the addition of new site adds. As we’ve discussed on previous calls, our goal in early 2008 was to complete the build-out of our markets and then sell aggressively into those markets to drive those markets EBITDA positive. We accomplished those goals. We also thought to turn up our sold customer locations backlog to drive revenue per site growth, and again, we accomplished a significant portion of that by turning up a little over 60% of our sold customer backlog.
Going into 2009 we continue to look for attractive investment opportunities as both Tom and I mentioned in our remarks, and we do expect to invest in the network and grow the network, both tactically and strategically with these new initiatives that we’re pursuing. At the same time, as we mentioned, we’re opportunistic about capital market opportunities and try to take advantage of those in the first quarter. So, we’ll continue to monitor all opportunities to invest our capital and to use our cash wisely, but I do expect that a portion of that will be used towards building new sites on a going-forward basis on a success basis in 2009.
Mark DeRussy - Raymond James
Then as a followup to that, how much of your capital budget next year is committed towards these new revenue initiatives that you talked about; that’s part A, and then part B, on the wholesale side, would you contemplate doing stuff outside of your existing footprint; in other words, you’ve got a nationwide spectrum portfolio; could you potentially leverage that?
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