Quarter Revenues

Nortel sees slower CDMA sales

Sue Marek — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:36:55 -0400

Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only vendor feeling the squeeze from a decrease in CDMA sales in North America. Nortel Networks today reported second quarter revenues of $2.6 billion, up slightly from $2.56 billion a year ago. However, the company had a net loss of $113 million, compared with a net loss of $37 million a year ago. The firm blamed the losses on economic weakness, competitive pressures and a reduction in spending from key North American customers. Nortel also said that its CDMA sales were down from $494 million last year to $446 million this year. On the GSM side, revenues were up more than 11 percent to $448 million.

Nortel announced earlier this summer that it was shifting its R&D efforts to LTE and teaming with Alvarion on all WiMAX initiatives.

For more:
- see this Light Reading story
- See this WSJ story (sub. req.)

Related articles:
Alca-Lu stung by CDMA weakness
Nortel teams with Alvarion on WiMAX; focus moves to LTE

Alca-Lu stung by CDMA weakness

Sue Marek — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:49:07 -0400

Infrastructure vendor Alcatel Lucent reported its sixth straight quarter of net losses and blamed its troubles on the weak dollar and a slowdown in CDMA equipment purchases. Specifically, the company said that CDMA activity has declined at a higher pace than expected. Much of this slowdown is due to a reduction in capital expenditures from a key customer in North America.

The telecom firm reported net losses of $1.73 billion for the quarter. In addition, it maintained its outlook of a 2 percent to 5 percent decline in revenue for 2008 and it expects the overall telecom equipment and services market to remain flat. Revenues for the quarter were $6.45 billion, down 5.2 percent compared with a year earlier. The company's services business was one area of strength for the firm. The services business had second quarter revenues of $1.27 billion, up from $1.16 billion a year ago.

Alcatel-Lucent has been plagued with troubles since the two firms merged two years ago and now investors and analysts are hoping that a management change will help it turn around. CEO Pat Russo will leave the company by year-end and chairman Serge Tchurak will step down Oct. 1 (see related story).

For more:
- see this Light Reading story

Related articles:
Services may be bright spot for Alca-Lu
Alcatel-Lucent looks to reassure investors amid economic troubles
Boos and catcalls rain down on Alcatel-Lucent CEO

Alltel releases some Q1 stats: 385K net new subs

Brian Dolan — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:43:44 -0400

While Alltel recently became a private company, the carrier still decided to release a number of key metrics for its past quarter. The company's revenues totaled $2.3 billion, which is an 11 percent increase over Q1 2007. In addition, Alltel reported a net loss of $125 million. However, those losses were mostly because of costs related to the merger, according to the carrier.

Subscribers: The carrier added 385,000 net new subscribers during the first quarter of 2008. The figure includes 163,000 net postpaid subscribers, 183,000 prepaid subscribers and 39,000 reseller net adds. The all-time high of net new subscribers marks a 63 percent increase over the same period a year ago.

ARPU: Alltel posted average revenue per user (ARPU) of $53.64, up 2 percent from last year. Data ARPU hit $7.50, which is 60 percent higher than last year.

Churn: Alltel posted a post-pay churn of 1.34 percent and total churn of 1.83 percent.

For more:
- check out our metric charts to see the latest net-subs, ARPU, and churn data of the industry's carriers
- read this Alltel Q1 press release

Sprint loses 1.09 million subscribers

Brian Dolan — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:22:49 -0400

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