(By Balachander) Inteliquent (NASDAQ:IQNT), formerly Neutral Tandem Inc., declared a special one-time cash dividend of $3.00 per share, or roughly totaling $97 million.
The Chicago-based provider of voice, data and hosted services also said it is engaged in ongoing talks with one of its largest customers. Those talks may result in a significant reduction in the rates that customer pays and require Inteliquent to pay to terminate certain traffic to that customer.
Inteliquent had earlier disclosed that the customer claims the company has been improperly terminating long distance traffic to it in breach of the parties' agreement. The company said it was not able to estimate reasonably the loss that it may incur, if any, in connection with this dispute.
However, such a loss, if any, could be material to the company's result of operations in the period recognized.
The company said it cannot predict the final termination amounts it will pay the carrier and the final rates the carrier will pay Inteliquent for the services the company provides, or whether the carrier will cease purchasing all or a portion of such services from the company.
The payment date for the special one-time cash dividend is October 30, 2012.
At $3.00 per share, the dividend represents around 33 percent of Inteliquent's closing stock price on October 3, 2012.
On Friday, shares retreated 14.24 percent to trade at $7.77. The stock has been trading between $7.22 and $14.15 over a 52-week period.