Sprint loses 1.09 million subscribers
During its first quarter earnings call this morning, Sprint Nextel did not disclose any more details on its Clearwire pact or discuss recent rumors that claimed Deutche Telekom may buy it. However, Sprint Nextel did note that it may sell some assets after its first quarter net losses expanded to $505 million. Losses in the year-ago period totaled $211 million. Those aren't the only losses facing Sprint: Q1 postpaid subscriber defections totaled 1.09 million. First-quarter revenues of $8.0 billion represented a 9 percent decline from the same quarter last year and a 6 percent fall from the fourth quarter of 2007.
Subscribers: Sprint's wireless business claimed 52.8 million total subscribers at the end of Q1, a decline the firm said reflects a smaller post-paid and affiliate base, partially offset by increases in prepaid and wholesale.
Churn: Postpaid churn came in at 2.45 percent compared to 2.3 percent in both Q1 and Q4 of 2007.
ARPU: Wireless ARPU slumped to $56, a 6 percent decline over year-ago totals and a 4 percent sequential decline. Sprint said data growth partially offset declining voice revenue, with data contributing more than $11.50 to overall postpaid ARPU in the first quarter and more than $14--roughly one quarter--of CDMA ARPU. Sprint credits overall year-over-year data growth of 19 percent to strong sales of aircards and demand for messaging services.
Forecasting only marginal improvements in the current quarter, Sprint said it may seek waivers or amendments from its creditors, but believes enough cash is in its coffers to continue operations and repay all its maturing debts through the end of 2009.
"Improving the customer experience and being more selective about the customers we acquire should improve churn, but we expect that post-paid subscriber losses will improve only marginally from first-quarter levels," CEO Dan Hesse said during the analyst call.
For more on Sprint's Q1 debacle:
- read this release
Comments (8) | Post a comment
Comments
By Anonymous | Posted 1:40pm | May 12, 2008
More layoffs were also announced by the revolving door that is Sprint. Sprint is in shambles...
By Anonymous | Posted 4:28pm | May 12, 2008
Fact is it takes time to right the ship of Gary Forsee and the previous regime. Hesse is making smart moves and Sprint is being aggressive in the marketplace with the Simply Everything plans and with new devices such as the Samsung Instinct. By end of this year I believe they will have turned things around considerably. The rumors of Sprint's demise have been overly exagerated.
By Anonymous | Posted 5:26pm | May 12, 2008
I can see from the post above being the only one, and being itself anonymous that Dan Hesse found it necessary to sing his own praise by posting this as no one else would. I point to his first earning call at Sprint being as one reporter pointed out all about what great things he has done in the past while at AT&T Wireless with inventing the "One Rate" plan. The "Simply Everything" Plan is just a rehash of this kind of thinking, and if anyone praising it was to do the math it Simply Isn't No Bargain " plan would be more like it. I am on a family plan on another carrier, and when that carrier announced they would copy it we check it out, and No Bargain as I am already getting a better deal. I would advise everyone to look more into Mr. Hesse's background before they expect miracles of Sprint. The truth is Sprint's fuutre is Clearwire which is why Barry West is President over there, and Nextel is a dying system which is why Sprint wants to sell it, adn then make itself a better target for DT. This will allow the existing Sprint shareholders to get a better price for the Sprint Assets.
BC
By Anonymous | Posted 5:30pm | May 12, 2008
Hey BC it looks like you understand the wireless business a little better or at least have a longer memory than most of the people who are getting excited about any possible bright future for Sprint. I would like to ask you a question since the previous poster talked about taking time to right the ship from the Gary Forsee mistakes. What do you think about that, and was Nextel actuall worth 33B since Sprint seems to place their current combined worth at about the same level. What happened in your opinion.
Concerned
By Anonymous | Posted 6:41pm | May 12, 2008
BC Here...Thanks for the excellent questions.
The comment about previous regime really doesn't work since Barry West I believe was part of that previous regime. The problems of Gary Forsee were many, and I am not defending him. I would like to point out that one of the issues he was tasked with was the integration of the Nextel Users into the Sprint system, and that was never accomplished, and the pending deadline for migration off of certain Nextel Frequencies to facilitate a retune of the Public Service Network which is adjacent and was negatively affected by the actions of another wireless CEO Loser who everybody seems to want to worship Morgan O.Brien (the CEO of Cyren Cal which caused the recent troubles in the D Block 700MHz) when he filed for a petition to change the previous rules setup initially to prevent interference ( I won't even go into that the current White Spaces petition has the same issues) during President Clinton's appointment Reed Hundt's days as FCC Chairman to allow the usage of SMDR licenses as a cellular like system. The SMDR licenses were poorly placed for this purpose, and have created countless interference issues for many Police, and Fire Departments around the USA. Gary Forsee placed too low a priority on this government mandated project and got distracted by the XOHM network which was about inflating the short term value of the company and distracting from the bigger long term issues that plagued Sprint because of the many flaws in the Nextel merger and technology issues.
I hope we can expect a little better vision from the management of D.T. than has been the revolving door at Sprint. I could go on to tell you stories about Dan Hesse that would chill your bones, but he is far from the kind of hands on technology savvy leader it will take to turn around Sprint.
I really see this as the beginning of the end of any major carrier not being originally a major telco with all of their inbreed monopolistic practices which seek to dictate legality of technology. In order words we will see the technology that best suits their profits margins and time lines rather than the technology that is possibly better for the consumer and overall marketplace.
BC
By Anonymous | Posted 6:58pm | May 12, 2008
Thew following link defines Push To Talk over Cellular and indicates that several market place providers are gearing up to provide a solution that could lure away Nextel's supposedly loyal customer base that many seem to misrepresent as a valid reason for the continued success of the offering.
BC
By Cynic | Posted 10:04am | May 13, 2008
Oh, yeah, no personal vendettas or sour grapes in these comments.
By WilliamC | Posted 7:31pm | May 15, 2008
I didn't want to trample on another persons comment. I have the simply everything plan - for 89.99. I get 900 minutes, Sprint tv and radio stations, unlimited mobile to mobile,
text
messaging,sprint navigation, unlimited picture mail,
unlimited web access, unlimited push-to-talk, free nights and weekends and my weekends start at 7:00 pm and stop at 7:00 am. Does AT&T, Verizon Wireless or TMobile give you that? NO! The first two are giant monopolies waiting to swallow SprintNextel but don't know how too. T-Mobile just gives you low cost plans with a lot of minutes. Big deal! I'd rather be given the store and pay a premium price without the worry. I also hear AT&t charges 15 bucks for a few tv stations and 20 bucks for Push-to-Talk alone. Sounds like a fortune to me. Look at Sprints data packs and you get more stuff included than the competitors. When the first two reach one hundred million customers - You will see shady billing practices, glitches, some network problems and last but not least expensive prices for cell phone, home phone, internet and telco tv packages and services. It is already happening now. The bigger they get the more they strangle your wallet or purse. So bigger does not always mean better.
We the consumers pay the price for these giant conglomerates - Does Time Warner come to your mind?