Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) released its first quarter earnings today, showing that results were substantially lower compared to the year-ago period, however, they were at the upper end of expectations for the quarter. The results are coming out after a week-long run up in their stock and rumors surfacing that they may receive a private-equity investment. The stock is up 33 cents, or about 9.4 percent today to trade at around $3.83 a share. Last week, the stock traded as high as $4.96 share, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to ask Virgin to explain the run-up. The company declined. We reported here at mocoNews that one reason for the stock run-up could be expectations of a company sale, or least some part of it, to either a PE, institutional or hedge fund investor, or a strategic. Update: In after-hours trading today, the stock has already declined 73 cents to $3.02 from today’s close of $3.75, hinting that the market may have been expecting an announcement of some kind.
Dan Schulman, Virgin Mobile USA’s CEO, talked to us today, addressing both today’s earnings release and the rumors. He said: “What I’m most pleased about is that we feel like the second quarter is a transitional quarter — our last negative quarter, and then the back-half of the year will have positive growth.” As far as the rumors, told us that they are always looking for opportunities. “We don
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