For the third quarter ending September 30, Cingular posted a rise in net income to $222m from $142m. When the $245m of merger-related integration costs and expenses from hurricanes Katrina and Rita is excluded, net income actually rose to $504m. Sales meanwhile increased to $8.74bn from $4.29bn in the year-ago quarter. Including pro-forma revenue from AT&T Wireless, Cingular’s revenue grew 6%.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Cingular is a joint venture of US telecom operators SBC Communications Inc and BellSouth Corp, and since it closed the acquisition of AT&T Wireless last October, it has concentrated on integrating the business, as well trying to retain customer numbers and increase average monthly revenues and profit margins.

It has had mixed success here. Monthly churn, the rate at which customers leave the service, increased to 2.3%, and Cingular blamed the increase on seasonal patterns and an unusually high number of contracts ending during the quarter. Average monthly revenue per user figures fell 5% from a year earlier to $49.65, down from $50.43 in the second quarter this year

However, during the quarter Cingular added 867,000 new subscribers, which was below an average estimate of 1.04 million from four analysts contacted by Reuters Estimates. This is the second quarter in a row Cingular has missed expectations here, but it still leads the US market with 52.3 million cellular customers, compared to the 47.4 million customers (last quarter) of second-placed operator Verizon Wireless, the joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc.

There is little doubt that the fierce bidding war for AT&T Wireless between Cingular and the world’s largest mobile operator, Newbury, UK-based Vodafone Group Plc, stretched the financial resources of its parents SBC Communications and BellSouth. Both organizations offloaded assets in 2004 to help pay the purchase cost, and last November Cingular announced that it would axe 7,000 jobs, about 10% of the 68,000 strong post-merger workforce.

The cost of the acquisition is still being felt, and the operator racked up $241m for merger-related integration costs. The damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita added $96m to its total operating expenses of $8.1bn in the third quarter.