NII Holdings has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced plans to focus on Brazil.
The U.S.-based, LatAm-focused telco’s exit from Chapter 11 will see it distribute 100 million shares of new common stock and $745 million in cash among holders of senior notes via two subsidiaries: NII Capital Corp and NII International Telecom.
NII Holdings has applied to list the new shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange. It expects to meet the conditions of listing in the coming weeks, at which time the shares will begin trading.
"Working through the reorganisation process has been challenging for all of our stakeholders, but we have emerged as a more streamlined and focused organisation with a strong balance sheet and a healthy liquidity position," said Steve Shindler, CEO of NII Holdings, in a statement on Friday.
After years of struggling to stem customer losses amid an expensive migration to 3G from its legacy iDEN infrastructure, NII Holdings filed for bankruptcy protection in New York in September 2014.
The company struck a restructuring deal in November that was later revised in March after NII Holdings agreed to sell its Nextel Mexico unit to AT&T for $1.9 billion.
That deal, coupled with the earlier sale of NII Holdings’ operations in Peru and Chile, leaves the company with two markets, Argentina and Brazil. However, the future of NII Holdings in Argentina is also in doubt, with local news outlets claiming in February that two private equity firms are interested in acquiring Nextel Argentina.
"We will concentrate our future investments in Brazil where we see a promising long-term growth opportunity, while remaining focused on reducing expenses and maintaining a lean cost structure," Shindler said. "We believe this is the best long-term strategy to create value for our stakeholders."
NII Holdings’ Nextel Brazil arm will have its work cut out trying to make up ground on the country’s big hitters though.
According to regulator Anatel, at the end of February Nextel had just 1.7 million mobile subscribers in a market boasting 282.6 million in total. That gives Nextel a market share of just 0.6%.
