Topeka Capital Markets Comments on Softbank Following Close of Sprint Acquisition

In a report published Friday, Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian J. White commented on recent developments related to

. In the report, Topeka Capital Markets noted, “Per one of the leading wireless infrastructure vendors at Mobile World Congress in February, the key to unlocking carrier capital expenditure spending in the U.S. market would be the closing of SoftBank's (9984 JP-¥5,830: NR) acquisition of Sprint (S-$7.19: NR) . The creation of a third large U.S. wireless carrier would drive increased competition in the U.S market and thus improve capital expenditure spending. SoftBank's aggressive reputation leads us to believe that the Company has grand ambitions for the U.S. market and will drive increased competition placing heightened pressure on leading U.S. vendors such as AT&T (T-$35.62: NR) and Verizon (VZ-$51.01: NR). We believe there are many different companies across the networking and telecom equipment landscape that should benefit from the SoftBank deal with Sprint.” Softbank Corp. closed on Wednesday at $58.28.