Jamar,
You hardly think that Helio is going out of business? Obviously, you are not an investor or have had much experience with the business side of running a company. Let me explain for you: Yes, Helio has experienced growth in terms of revenue and adding subscribers and the have a better ARPU than other wireless carriers, but they have no sense of cost-control and burn rate is horrific. Their cost to acquire a new customer is much higher than all the other carriers and MVNOs out there.

Regarding their balance sheet, in 2006, Helio’s net loss was $192 million, and in 2007 that number increased to $326 million. The losses do not come as a surprise; for example, Helio’s advertising spend jumped from $21.6 million in 2006 to $47.5 million in 2007. This is a company who staged coast-to-coast red-carpet events at very expensive nighclubs, large billboard displays, television ads and...in my opinion, very in-effective online marketing (email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and other ads and banners). Their online marketing expenses account for a large part of their budget, but their conversion rate is abnormally low...maybe due to gimmicks like the one I wrote about in my post. Helio reported that it has raised a total of around $600 million. Analysts that I have spoken with believe they have about $5 Million of that left. But, really the final nail in their coffin is a dangerously low working capital. In my opinion, these factors are why they are looking for a buyer.

In my opinion, Virgin (or any other carrier) will not buy them and assume all those liabilities because if they wait a few more months--they can buy Helio’s assets out of bankruptcy court. A small private equity firm got the assets of AMP’d Mobile at a bargain basement price when they went belly up. Earthlink has already cut off Helip because they were a drain on their resources...and Earthlink suffered a heavy toll because of Heilo---they recently laid off about half their staff. Sure, the guys at SK Telecom say “they will never give up on Helio” but shareholders will always cut off the feeding tube of a bloated, cash burning subsidiary. Also, the Koreans are likely to go the bankruptcy route because laws in the USA make it very easy for a company to file bankruptcy.

I’ve always admired Helio for their no-nonsense approach to marketing. In fact, when they launched in October 2005, Helio and Sky Dayton promised to “End Confusing Rate Plans and Cheap Gimmicks.” Apparently something went terribly wrong. I wrote a blog post about their latest “near bait and switch” marketing ploy.

SK Telecom may never give up on Helio, but I have.

http://blog.sensiblemarketing.biz/cheap-marketing-gimmicks-at-helio/

Hey Mike. I have a friend, Catherine Anderson, who was recently laid off from KnowledgeStorm (they were acquired by TechTarget). Catherine was one of their best ad execs. She lives in Atlanta, are you looking outside of LA?