A well-known Cable Bahamas shareholder doubts whether the Government would award the company a cellular licence to compete against the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), while giving cautious backing to its $65 million Florida expansion.
Praising the BISX-listed communications provider’s willingness to expand beyond the Bahamas as “refreshing to see”, given that most Bahamian companies tended to look inwards, Dionisio D’Aguilar acknowledged that this market’s relative “maturity” made such a move almost inevitable.
And the continuing uncertainty over the Christie administration’s communications industry policy, Mr D’Aguilar said, meant Cable Bahamas could not count on its main growth opportunity in this nation – liberalisation of the cellular/mobile phone market.
Yet he added that Cable Bahamas’ Board of Directors would have to justify to investors the wisdom in taking on more debt, given that $111.101 million in such liabilities were on its balance sheet at end-March 2012.
The company is proposing to finance the acquisition of Macro Island Cable and NuVu LLC, plus Summit Broadband, from a combination of new and existing bank credit facilities, plus the issuance of ordinary shares to the latter company’s owners and a preference share offering to Bahamian investors. The credit facilities, and preference share issue, are likely to push Cable Bahamas’ debt somewhere beyond the $150 million mark.
