After a week that saw SoftBank try to exert its influence on Sprint ahead of the completion of its stake purchase next year and more rumblings that shareholders were initially unsatisfied with the initial offer and holding out for more money, Sprint and Clearwire have agreed on the widely reported offer of $2.97/share this morning for Sprint to purchase the rest of Clearwire not already owned by the carrier, with remaining investors and stakeholders Comcast, Intel and Bright House Networks also agreeing to the deal after Sprint made an initial non-binding offer of $2.60/share on November 21st, which was summarily rejected.
After signalling that it would not allow Sprint to pay more than $2.60/share, SoftBank also signed off on this offer and all parties reiterated that this purchase is contingent on the SoftBank deal closing as expected in mid-2013. For its part, Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch has opened up on why it took the Sprint offer, stating that it had great difficulty in finding another key investor that would have helped the company while it considered other options that even included selling off part of its spectrum holdings.
With Clearwire never seeming to reach a position of profitability since its founding and even after its 2008 relaunch despite having major investment from Google and the nation’s largest cable companies, the internet service provider seemed to still tread water even after millions of dollars in investment which included product development and tie ins before the company experienced financial trouble beginning in late 2010 and lasting until now, even after going to a flat-rate pricing model and an ill-advised youth-oriented spinoff operation that was shuttered all within the last 24 months.
