NIHD 4th Quarter Profit Roughly Doubles

NII Holdings 4th-Quarter Profit Swells on New Subscriber Additions

RESTON, Va. (AP) -- NII Holdings Inc., a provider of Nextel cell phone service in Latin America, on Tuesday said fourth-quarter profit roughly doubled as the company hooked several hundred thousand new subscribers.

Net income mushroomed to $107.9 million, or 60 cents per share, from $49.4 million, or 29 cents per share, in the year-earlier period. Quarterly revenue increased to $671 million from $512.6 million -- up 31 percent year over year.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected the company to earn 43 cents per share on $665.2 million in sales.

NII said it added 252,000 net subscribers in the latest quarter, a 25 percent jump from the prior year, while average monthly service revenue per client was flat at $59.

At year end, the company's subscriber base totaled 3.4 million, up 49 percent from the same time a year ago.

***Update*** After holding this with good profits before Citi's downgrade, and now subsequently being in the red, I'm looking for this to gap me back up into the black.