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America Movil pays heavily to up regional market share |
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Written by jamaicaobserver.com
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 |
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Mexican telecommunications giant America Movil (AMX) paid a hefty price to increase its presence in the Caribbean market by 29 per cent last year, having decided to grab up, through acquisitions, a regional stake in a market that is well into the liberalisation process.
When AMX paid 25.3 billion pesos for MiPhone and a Puerto Rican mobile company, it meant that the firm paid nearly eight times what it cost its major regional competitor, Digicel, to bring on less than a million customers to its regional customer base. In its financial statements for the quarter ending December 31, AMX noted that "the cash flow we generated throughout the year allowed us to finance our capital expenditures in the amount of 34.6 billion pesos (and) to pay the purchase price of our Puerto Rican and Jamaican operations, 25.3 billion pesos". The two acquisitions by the Mexican firm brought on 786,000 subscribers to its client base, but the larger amount would have been attributed to the Spanish-speaking island as MiPhone had 222,000 clients by AMX's account.... full article |