Poster child for the modern MVNO, the celebrated US Virgin Mobile, is planning to IPO in the US raising just a tiny amount, $100 million, but effectively putting a value on the entire company, which has amassed revenues of over $1 billion in just 5 years of operation, attracting some 4.8 million customers. The IPO was revealed through a filing made at the SEC this week.
The UK arm of Virgin Mobile was merged into the dominant UK cable operation NTL, with a price tag of $1.7 billion for just 2 million customers. At the time the largest slice of customers, 3 million, were left in the US arm, but this has since risen dramatically and now the company must attract a valuation north of $3 billion, and potentially far higher.
Virgin bills itself as a pay-as-you-go mobile service for the youth market aged 14 to 34 and is 47% held by Sprint, and runs on the Sprint Nextel network.
Virgin launched the service in July 2002, reaching one million customers by November 2003 and says its now serves 4.88 million and has a deal with Sprint that takes it through the next twenty years.
Its offerings include ringtones, text, instant and picture messaging, email and entertainment content and with 17% of is service revenues from non-voice services, it carries significantly more data that other similar US networks and is sold through 130,000 third party retail stores including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, RadioShack and Target.