That works out to $24 per share in cash for iPCS. This is a 34 percent premium over the company’s closing price of $17.88 per share on Friday, but perhaps a small price to pay for putting an end to the two iPCS lawsuits–one over Sprint’s acquisition of Virgin Mobile, the other over its investment in Wimax operator Clearwire.

As a result of the iPCS deal, Sprint (S) will no longer be required to divest its iDen network in certain iPCS (IPCS) territories, though iPCS had won a court ruling requiring Sprint to do so. Now, Sprint will not only keep those assets, it can peddle their services to some 700,000 iPCS customers in a territory that covers 81 markets in seven states.

Below, the official announcement:

Sprint Nextel to Acquire Wireless Affiliate iPCS, Inc.

More than 700,000 PCS Wireless Users and 270,000 Wholesale Customers to Become Sprint Direct Subscribers
Extends Company’s Direct Service Territory to an Additional 12.6 Million People
Sprint Ends Plan to Divest iDEN Network Assets in Certain Midwestern States Pending Transaction Close
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. & SCHAUMBURG, Ill.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct. 19, 2009– Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and iPCS, Inc. (NASDAQ: IPCS) today announced an agreement for Sprint Nextel to acquire iPCS for approximately $831 million, including the assumption of $405 million of net debt. This transaction value represents 6.4x projected 2010 Adjusted Earnings Before Income, Taxes, and Depreciation (“Adjusted EBITDA”*). Sprint expects to achieve approximately $30 million of synergies annually in the transaction and expects the transaction to be free cash flow accretive to Sprint in 2010.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sprint Nextel will commence a cash tender offer to acquire all of iPCS’ outstanding common shares for $24.00 per share. This price per share represents a 34 percent premium to iPCS’ closing stock price as of October 16, 2009. The agreement also requires a minimum of a majority of the shares outstanding (on a fully-diluted basis) to be tendered in the offer. Following completion of the tender offer, any remaining shares of iPCS will be acquired in a cash merger at the same price per share. Shareholders with approximately 9.5 percent of the outstanding common shares of iPCS have already agreed to tender their shares pursuant to the tender offer and to vote their shares in favor of the merger.

The acquisition is subject to customary regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to be completed either late in the fourth quarter of 2009 or early 2010. As part of the agreement, Sprint Nextel and iPCS will seek an immediate stay of all pending litigation between the parties with a final resolution to become effective upon closing of the acquisition.

As a result, Sprint will no longer be required to divest its iDEN network in certain iPCS territories and will terminate its previously announced divestiture process pending closing of the transaction.

iPCS’s services are sold under the Sprint brand name and in Sprint-branded stores. Because of the nearly seamless marketing and sales relationship between Sprint and iPCS, customers should not experience any change in their service as a result of this transaction.

“Acquiring iPCS brings added value to Sprint by expanding our direct customer base, growing our direct coverage area and simplifying our business operations,” said Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel. “Customers in iPCS territory will see a seamless transition and continue to enjoy a superb customer experience.”

“We are very pleased to have reached this agreement with Sprint Nextel. Given the increasingly competitive landscape, we believe this is an opportune time to provide our shareholders with a liquidity event at a very attractive price. iPCS shareholders will receive a significant and immediate premium for their shares and our customers will continue to receive the same excellent service from the same dedicated people who provide that service today,” said Timothy M. Yager, president and CEO of iPCS. “We look forward to working with the Sprint Nextel team to ensure a smooth completion of the transaction and transition in the coming months.”

Continuing, Folino accuses Broadcom of engineering its bid to commandeer new contracts that Emulex recently won at the expense of its rivals–including Broadcom.

“Your unsolicited proposal is opportunistic given Broadcom is uniquely aware of the new unannounced design wins that Emulex has secured with tier-one OEMs at the expense of Broadcom and other competitors,” Folino writes. “As you know, these design wins are kept confidential at our customers’ request and do not typically begin contributing revenue for several quarters. Thus, Emulex’s stock price does not fully reflect the long-term value creation potential that the Company has already secured. However, given that some of these design wins have come at your expense, including your core Ethernet networking business, you are uniquely aware of the future value we have secured and how well positioned we are to unseat you on many other platforms in the near future. We believe your proposal is an opportunistic attempt to capture that value, which rightly belongs to our stockholders.”

In other words, quit low-balling us–especially if, as you profess, you’d like to move ahead with a deal in a “friendly, collaborative manner.”

Shares in the company dropped more than 27 percent percent to $6.48 in premarket trading following reports that Sun’s board rejected a formal acquisition offer by IBM (IBM). After weeks of negotiations, the two companies were thought to be finalizing a deal for about $7 billion. But IBM lowered its offer over the weekend and then withdrew it after Sun balked at the price and terms of the sale. IBM is believed to have originally offered $10 and $11 a share for Sun, but subsequently reduced that bid to $9.40 a share, which was a bit too low for the fading company’s taste.

Seems Sun (JAVA) has quite a bit more in common with Yahoo (YHOO), which notoriously balked at a $44 billion buyout offer from Microsoft (MSFT) last year, than you’d think.

Whether the deal is dead is unclear, but things certainly aren’t looking good–for future negotiations and for Sun, as Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Toni Sacconaghi suggested in a research note to clients this morning. “While press reports suggest that the fall-out in discussions may be attributable to brinkmanship, we do think that a collapse in the talks has considerably weakened Sun’s hand, as we see no other likely suitors, and a considerably higher potential for weakened (fiscal year third quarter) results,” he wrote. “… Given the size of the premium and the fact that Sun’s board has presided over a decline in the company’s stock price over the last eight years from over $250/share to less than $5 prior to the acquisition talks being leaked, we believe that (Sun Microsystems) is likely to face significant shareholder unrest, similar to what occurred when Yahoo declined Microsoft’s offer.”

Which means things are about to get ugly–really ugly–for Sun, which doesn’t appear to have any other likely suitors and will almost certainly see its third-quarter results weakened by the doubt it has just instilled in potential customers.

What the company desperately needs is for the Pre to have an iPhone-like debut. But with consumer demand down and the Palm (PALM) brand lacking the cachet and draw of Apple (APPL), analysts say that will be difficult to achieve. Apple sold 6.1 million iPhones in the first full year after the device’s 2007 launch. Analyst’s put Palm’s shipment of Pres in the first year at 2.6 million. “What the BlackBerry and iPhone did was to be game changers,” Interbrand’s Andy Bateman told Bloomberg. “As a brand, Palm is a little dusty. Coming from behind, it’s going to have to do an awful lot to make up the difference.”

And in more than just brand perception. With its typically south-of-$5 shares trading north of $8 on the promise of the Pre, Palm needs to sell eight million units (total handsets, including the Treo, etc.) simply to justify its current stock price, according to Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt. And that, says McCourt, will require “success beyond Sprint” (S). Yet, we’ve not heard about any further carrier deals. For Palm’s sake, lets hope we do soon. With the company’s sales down by about 70 percent in the last quarter, Apple ramping up to release iPhone OS 3.0 and consumers beaten into submission by the recession, this summer is not the best time to be debuting a device meant to take on the iPhone.

Palm, incidentally, is expected to make some sort of official announcement about something or other later today.

“Number of times in 2008 that the S&P 500 closed up or down 5 percent in a single day: 17

Number of times between 1956 and 2007 it did this: 17”

– Harper’s Index

If Google shares drop any further, the company may have to reprice its employees’ underwater stock options a second time. Google shares (GOOG) slipped below $300 on Friday and remain there today, trading at $292 as I write. That’s less than half their 52-week high of $602.45. Clearly, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s grim economic commentary last week has had a deleterious effect on the company’s once stratospheric stock price. But how else were investors to interpret his comments? “We are not immune” to current economic conditions and “I view the situation as pretty dire” don’t exactly hint at surprisingly strong quarterly results.

UPDATE: As the commenter below notes, Sirius could file for an extension in November. If it were granted, the company would then have another 180 days to meet NASDAQ’s minimum bid requirement, which would take it all the way into 2010.

David Faber: The stock price is very low.

Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin: It sucks.”

– Mel Karmazin states the obvious in a July 2008 interview with CNBC

At Sirius XM’s (SIRI) annual meeting Thursday, shareholders approved a reverse stock split plan that empowers the board to split common Sirius shares by a 1-for-10 to 1-for-50 ratio by end of 2009. They also approved the issuance of up to 3.5 billion new shares. Should Sirius need to, it can now effect a reverse split that will raise its stock price above the $1 necessary to avoid delisting and sell new shares to meet the almost $1 billion in loan repayments it faces next year.

Sounds like a reasonable plan on the face of things. Trouble is Sirius is trading at around $.14. And at that anemic price, proceeds from a sale of 3.5 billion new shares would amount to just $490 million–less than half the amount of the debt coming due next year. Sirius clearly hopes it won’t have to issue all 3.5 billion shares the vote approved. To do so would dilute existing holdings and drag its share price still deeper into the mud. It would, however, keep the company in business–in the short term. Sirius’s long-term viability is another problem entirely, one that’s not easily solved. With an almost $5 billion loss in its last quarter, subscriber growth plateauing, and the U.S. auto industry–a major source of new Sirius sales–in decline, the satellite radio provider really needs to do something to shore up its ailing business. And its plans to drive subscriber growth, outlined in the second slide below, may not be enough to do it.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Your Report Card Is Your Stock Price? Guess Sirius Is Making Straight $.13’s…
• Save Sirius Coalition Having Trouble Saving Sirius
• Karmazin: Ask Not What Sirius Can Do for You; Ask What You Can Do for Sirius
• Trade You 77 shares of SIRI for 1 Month of “Sirius Everything”
• Sirius CEO: This Sucks

Given Sirius XM’s low stock price, Mr. Karmazin said he would love to take the company private. But given the state of the credit markets, ‘How do you find [the money] today?’ If the company were generating positive cash flow, which he expects it to do for the full year in 2009, privatization would become much more feasible, he says.”

– Wall Street Journal, Sept. 15, 2008

Looks like Sirius XM (SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin won’t be taking the company private anytime soon, although given its current stock price there’s no reason he couldn’t. At its current value, you’d have to sell off more than 70 shares of SIRI to purchase a one-month subscription to Sirius Satellite Radio.

Speaking at the Reuters Media Summit in New York Wednesday, Karmazin said he’s optimistic about the troubled satellite radio provider’s fourth-quarter revenues. Karmazin sees double-digit growth in 2009, despite the current economic environment, which he bemoaned on an earnings call last month with a very blunt, but entirely apt: “This environment sucks.” And though he was happy to discuss privatization with The Journal just a few months ago, that option seems to be off the table. “We don’t feel that we need to be acquired,” he said. “You should assume the company is not for sale.”

For now, anyway.

When Apple (AAPL) releases its first-quarter results in January, Zaky believes the company will report earnings of $1.96 per share on sales of $11.29 billion.

That’s about $1.2 billion more revenue than most analysts are calling for.

“That would mark the largest revenue beat by any company I’ve ever seen, and will generally be an all out fantasy-like decimation of analyst consensus estimates,” Zaky writes. “Depending on where the stock price is at the time of earnings, where the consensus and whisper numbers stand going into the results, and the market’s current sentiment on equities, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 20 point move in the stock price. This is a once in a blue moon type of earnings situation that will likely be far more surprising than Google’s results last April.”

A once in a blue moon earnings situation. If that’s truly the case, then why the big discrepancy between Zaky’s numbers and consensus estimates? Zaky says the street’s been addled in the head by the econanlypse.

“It has gotten to the point of irrational bearish exuberance, that the estimates no longer reflect even a scintilla of financial reality,” he writes. “The analysts have been consistently wrong in predicting Apple’s earnings results and this time they’re going to get their ‘hats handed to them,’ as the expression goes.”

Perhaps. We’ll see in January.

And the company’s proposed advertising partnership with Google (GOOG) has been delayed due to the Justice Department’s ongoing related antitrust review.

And its lucrative stakes in two Asian Internet firms–Alibaba.com and Gmarket–have lost 22 percent of their value, or $2.1 billion, since Yahoo assessed them in July.

And its quarterly profit and sales are expected to fall short of consensus estimates because of what CEO Jerry Yang likes to call headwinds.

Now that Yahoo is trading at $12.63 in an economy that’s falling Homer Simpson-style down the long rocky slope of economic collapse, some of the company’s institutional investors are hoping to convince it to sell itself to Microsoft (MSFT). Mithras Capital Partners, which holds about 1.9 million shares of Yahoo, has proposed selling the company to Microsoft for $22 a share, a 74 percent premium on Yahoo’s current stock price, but something of a discount over the $31-per-share Microsoft once offered and the $40-a-share for which Yahoo had hoped.

In a letter to the two companies, Mithras suggested Microsoft acquire the Internet underachiever, sell off its Asian assets and nonsearch businesses and extract $3 billion worth of cost savings and $2.8 billion of tax benefits. That would essentially mean that the Software giant would pay $10.3 billion for Yahoo’s search business, $2 billion less than it planned to spend back in July. “It is imperative for Microsoft to act now, while the Yahoo-Google deal is mired in regulatory concerns, and before Yahoo strikes a deal with AOL,” said Mark Nelson, a partner at Mithras. “It is imperative for the Yahoo board to embrace this proposal as the best outcome for long-suffering Yahoo shareholders.”

I suppose. But if Yahoo’s board felt $31-a-share “massively undervalued” the company, what will they think about $22?