Money for nothing and chips for free
Despite Intel's resolve back in March not to throw any more money into the black hole of Clearwire's wallet, it seems the firm has cracked, along with other investors who have all agreed to stump up yet another $1.5 billion for the firm's 4G WiMAX service.
Having said that, Sprint will be coughing up most of the cash, putting up $1.176 billion of the new investment, whilst Comcast chips in for $196 million, Time Warner Cable $103 million, and Intel a relatively paltry $50 million. Intel has already invested over a billion dollars in the company to date, however.
Clearwire reckons this time around it should have just enough funding to carry it through its scheduled nationwide WiMAX rollout next year, although, to be honest, we've heard that line before.
The firm is still hemorrhaging money, announcing on Tuesday it had suffered a third quarter loss of $82.4 million, or 43 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $72.7 million.
The company's shares, which have depreciated by over 50 per cent since Intel and co made their initial investments, fell a further 3.5% to $7 in after-hours trading after rising 6.6% in the regular session.
In light of the firm's poor financial results, it's quite understandable that Internet giant, Google, chose to sit this round of funding out. The firm was probably disheartened that a previous investor round of $3.2 billion wasn't enough to give Clearwire a kick in the pants.
