Sprint Keeps On Turning That Corner

The larger the company, the longer the turnaround seems to take.  Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) has been at it now all year, and with their Q3 earnings they kept on trudging through the process.  Revenues actually grew sequentially to $8.15B, while their loss per share also expanded to $0.30.  The former was ahead of expectations, while the latter missed slightly.  Seems to me that the higher revenues were the more important of the two at this time, but who listens to me eh?

Total postpaid subscribers still fell by 107K, but that is the best it has been in recent memory.  Sprint-branded postpaid customers added 354K, which offset much of the churn from the Nextel side.  Total wireless subscribers rose by 644K as the prepaid subscriber base continued to swell, reaching 48.8M across all subscriber types.  The company also forecast that wireless subscriber results will improve across the board in Q4.

As for the company’s forgotten sibling, the wireline business, results had a familiar tinge.  Revenues fell 2.1% sequentially to $1.245B while adjusted OIBDA mostly held its ground at $271M, down 0.7%.  Capex rose sequentially to $59M, still just 4.7% of revenue for the quarter though.  As usual, a decline in voice volumes and a shift in the revenue mix toward IP drove results.

All in all, Sprint continues to show incremental improvement on the wireless side, while managing the wireline business for cash.

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Categories: Financials · Internet Backbones · Wireless