NII Holdings

NII Holdings, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: NIHD
Industry	Wireless Services
Predecessor	Nextel[1]
Founded	1995[2]
Headquarters	Reston, Virginia, United States
Area served	Brazil
Key people	Steve Shindler (CEO)
Products	High speed networks, Two way messaging, Push to Talk
Revenue	USD 6.746 billion
Number of employees	16,089
Subsidiaries	Nextel Brazil
Website	www.nii.com

NII Holdings, Inc. (formerly Nextel International) is an American holding company that, through its subsidiary Nextel Telecomunicações Ltda., provides mobile communications services under the Nextel brand in Brazil.^[3] NII operates iDEN, 3G UMTS/HSDPA, and 4G LTE networks in Brazil.

In 2012, for the third consecutive year, NII Holdings ranked in the Fortune 500 and Barron's 500 lists. NII also has been named one of the best places to work among multinationals in Latin America by the Great Place to Work® Institute.^[4]

NII went through bankruptcy in 2014 and 2015.^[5]

History

NII originally launched as the international business unit of Nextel Communications^[6] as McCaw International in 1995. Later Nextel changes its name to Nextel international in 1997.^[7]

Nextel International changed its name to NII Holdings in 2001^[8]

Divestiture of Minority Interest

In China, NII Holdings had to sell its minority interest in Shanghai CCT-McCaw Telecommunications Systems Co., Ltd in March 2000 because China Unicom Informed NII Holdings that its minority share of twelve percent had to be terminated because its financing structure was no longer permitted by Chinese regulations.^[9]

Due to unfavorable market conditions, NII Holdings sold their twenty one percent Minority interest^[10] of NEXNET Co(Nextel Japan) to Motorola for 10 million in exchange for forgiveness of debt owed to Motorola in 2001^[11]

NII Holdings also sold their fourteen percent minority interest in Telus^[10] for 196 million dollars also in the year 2001^[11]

First Bankruptcy and Reorganization

NII Holdings filed its first chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 2002. The road to bankruptcy started when NII Holdings' Nextel Argentina operating company failed to make a principle payment of 108 million in December 2001. In February 2002, NII Holdings failed to make a 41 million dollar interest payment on a 650 million dollar bond as well in order to preserve cash while it restructured its debts and implemented a revised business plan.^[12]

NII Holdings exited from bankruptcy in On November 12, 2002 with Nextel owning 36% of the restructured company.^[12]

Following its Bankruptcy restructuring, NII Holdings begins trading a NII on NASDAQ as NIHD.^[7] in 2003

Discontinuation and Divestiture of Nextel Philippines

Nextel Philippines started operations in 1995. But due to poor operating performance, being in violation of Philippine ownership laws, as well as an attempt to save cash, NII Holdings decided to stop funding its Nextel Communications Philippines, Inc operations at the end of fiscal year 2001.^[13] By the end of the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2002, NII Holdings sold its 59.1% share in Nextel Philippines with its fifty three thousand, eight hundred subscribers for 23.5 Million^[14] to the The Velarde group called Next Mobile^[15]

Quarterly report Amendments

On October 27, 2004, NII amended its 2003 Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the first and second quarters of 2004 to restate its financial statements to correct the errors in the periods in which they originated as soon as practical.^[16]

On March 7, 2005, the company said it would restate financial statements for the entirety of 2003 and the first nine months of 2004 after finding accounting errors.^[17]

Agreement with Televisa

In February 2010, NII Holdings and Grupo Televisa signed a definitive agreement under which Televisa would have acquired an equity stake in Nextel Mexico. Under the agreement, Televisa would have invested $1.44 billion in cash for an initial 30% equity stake in Nextel Mexico, which implies Nextel Mexico's pre-investment value at $4.3 billion.^[18] On October 19, 2010, however, vice president and COO in Mexico Gustavo Cantu announced the partnership had been terminated by mutual agreement. More recently Cantu spoke about the future of content and telecommunications in Mexico.^[19]

Divestiture of Nextel Peru and Chile

In August 2013, NII Holdings completed the sale of Nextel Peru to Entel.^[20] for 400 million dollars^[21]

In August 2014, NII Holdings sold Nextel Chile to Fucata, S.A^[20]

Second Bankruptcy and Reorganization

On January 26, 2015, it was announced that AT&T had entered into an agreement with NII Holdings, Inc. to acquire its wireless business in Mexico for US$1.875 billion, less the outstanding net debt of the business at closing, in a transaction pursuant to Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Decline and Mismanagement

The road to bankruptcy is one that was due to the arrogance to of NII Holdings' Mexican executives. Nextel Mexico President Peter Foyo started a trend for other executives to live in other states where Nextel had no corporate presence. Nextel's president lived in Cancun, Quintana Roo.^[22] In December 2013, Peter Foyo was ousted from the company ^[23]

Nextel Mexico also reacted too slow to Sprint's announcement of that it was shutting down its iDEN network in 2012.^[22] Sprints iDEN shutdown eliminated Nextel's Mexico main competitive advantage, which was free calls to the United States. After Sprint Shutdown its iDEN network, many regions of Northern Mexico lost coverage that was provided by Sprint via roaming agreements. This resulted in a loss of one million subscribers the following Quarter; leaving Nextel Mexico with only 2.93 million subscribers.^[24] After Nextel Mexico coverage degraded due to Sprint's iDEN Shutdown, Nextel Mexico also delayed the deployment of the 30Mhz of Spectrum that it acquired in the 1.7 and 2.1 GHz bands in 2010 resulting in additional subscriber losses in Mexico.^[24]

NII named John McMahon president and Gustavo Cantu remained as COO after Peter Foyo was dismissed. Gustavo Cantu left the company the next year to join New York Life as it's COO for Mexico.

Defaulting on Bonds

Due to falling subscriber count in Mexico and mounting debt of US$5.8 billion, NII Holdings opted to not pay $118.8 million in interest obligations on Senior Notes that were due on August 15, 2014.^[25] On September 15, 2014 NII filed for bankruptcy protection^[26] after losing 77 thousand subscribers and $629 million in the previous quarter.

Divestiture of Mexican Assets

On April 30, 2015, NII Holdings finalized the sale of Nextel Mexico, of which it held control for 18 years, for US$1.875 billion. NII Holdings ended up with US$1.448 billion in Net Proceeds after paying off a defaulted debt balance of $350.5 million to repay in full the outstanding principal and accrued interest due under its debtor-in-possession loan that it borrowed in March 2015.^[27]

Post Bankruptcy

NII Holdings exited bankruptcy with court approval on June 29, 2015. ^[28] where it offered 100 million shares of new common stock and $745 million in cash to its debt holders under its old stock ticker NIHD. In September of the same year, NII Holdings announced that they sold forty-nine percent of Nextel Argentina to Grupo Clarin further reducing their operations in the Argentinian Market in order to support their growing Brazilian operations.^[29]

Sale of Nextel Argentina

On January 29, 2016 NII Holdings completed selling its remaining shares of Nextel Argentina to Clarín Group.^[30]

Wireless operations

Currently NII Holdings operates Nextel Brazil offering post paid wireless voice and data services

Wireless Networks

Nextel Brazil operates the following network

References

External links

• NII Holdings, Inc.
  • Nextel Brazil