Out Fox The $treet

After a wild couple of weeks in the domestic wireless sector following the  announcement  that AT&T ( T ) would purchase T-Mobile from Deustche TeleKom ( DTEGY.PK ) in a $39B deal, the speculation in the media has centered mostly around other potential wireless mergers in the U.S. Odd, considering that the U.S. market is very mature and past major telecom mergers a la Sprint ( S ) and Nextel in the wireless sector and MCI ( MCIP ) and WorldCom in the wireline/data sector have largely been flops. Between merging networks and combining billing systems, it's extremely time-consuming and underproductive to undertake (trust me, I know from first-hand experience of working the projects of trying to merge the billing systems of MCI and WorldCom)..... Read the full story at Seeking Alpha . Disclosure: Long MICC and NIHD for client and personal accounts. Please review the disclaimer page. 

Millicom Cellular (MICC) remains one of the cheapest ways to play the mobile internet revolution and the growth in Latin America and Africa. Due to global growth and the demand for commodities, Africa is becoming a major growth story and MICC provides one of the few investment options. MICC has cellular operations in the following 7 African countries with the associated market ranking: Chad (2), DRC (1), Ghana (2), Mauritius (2), Rwanda (3), Senegal (2), Tanzania (2). With 12.2M customers and a population under license of 169M, MICC has huge growth ahead. Cellular remains the only viable option in most of these countries. Not surprisingly MICC is hitting a new 52 week high today. MICC will remain a solid position in the Growth Portfolio for a long time.

Even with the horrible economic environment and a stronger dollar impacting their foriegn operations, Millicom (MICC) continues to post strong growth. Having mobile operations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa does help as the economic malaise isn't as impacting in those countries and the demand for wireless to improve productiviy and provide for basic communications will continue growing. For those willing to look you can still find companies posting 18% revenue growth and 31% EBITDA growth even in this environment. So why is the stock price down 66%? Good question! The results would suggest that the stock would be trading at all time highs. From a technical perspective, MICC looks like it could be breaking out to the upside as its bounced nicely above the 50 ema. We recently purchased more stock in the funds and personal accounts. Looks like good timing considering the 8% rise after the results this AM. 38% increase in subscribers** for Q4 08 versus Q4 07, bringing total subs...

Thats the good news. Unfortunately Millicom International Cellular's (MICC) stock dropped 33% today. It's difficult to follow what the market saw that was so scary about the report. A 27% increase in revenues followed by a 25% increase in EBITDA seems rather impressive in this economy. Especially considering the low valuation level of 2.7x EBITDA that MICC now trades at. Does valuation not matter any more? Highlights of the Q3 report: 53% increase in subscribers for Q3 08 versus Q3 07, bringing total subscribers to 30.6 million 27% increase in revenues for Q3 08 to $869 million (Q3 07: $686 million) 25% increase in EBITDA for Q3 08 to $369 million (Q3 07: $296 million) 17% increase in net profit for Q3 08 of $161 million (Q3 07: $138 million) Basic earnings per common share for Q3 08 of $1.49 (Q3 07: $1.36) Millicom International Cellular S.A. is a global telecommunications group with mobile telephony operations in 16 countries in Asia, Central America, South America, and Afric...