Clearwire
Time Warner Cable
So the entire load of not-so-restricted Class A shares is presumably for sale on the open market now.
Time Warner still holds a small, indirect interest in Clearwire through regional cable subsidiary Bright House Networks, which owns 8.5 million Class B shares for a 0.6% stake of the company's total votes. Sprint Nextel
But Sprint considered giving up 77 million shares in the second quarter and Google
And it's not like Clearwire couldn't use some investor cash at the moment. The company is busy supplementing its WiMax 4G network with another operation based on the competing LTE 4G standard. All that hardware is expensive. For now, Clearwire can only commit to supporting LTE phones in "densely populated urban areas." The rest of the country will have to wait until Clearwire can afford to go there.
Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan notes that Time Warner cares less about Clearwire's network now that the cable company has an agreement with Verizon
In other words, look out below even after Tuesday's 12% price drop. Shares have plunged 41% over the last 12 months, but the bottom still lies ahead.
Mobile communications is still a vibrant market, but Clearwire is missing the boat. However, there's one surprising stock poised to make the most of this trillion-dollar revolution.