Sprint reports smaller-than-expected loss, promises more cost cuts

CEO Marcelo Claure, who joined Sprint about a year ago, has introduced many changes in the organization in the past few months with an aim to turn around the dwindling performance of the company. Analysts predicted $8.33 billion.

Sprint, 80 percent owned by Japan’s SoftBank Corp, also reported that its revenue fell 8.7 percent in the quarter.

Sprint added 310,000 new postpaid customers, or wireless subscribers who pay on a monthly basis after usage, compared with a loss of 181,000 customers a year ago. The latest figures show Sprint with a total of 57 million customers and T-Mobile with 58.9 million.

Separately, Claure said Sprint is still assessing whether to enter the 600MHz auction bids and noted the spectrum might not be available until 2020. This service has a phone expert personally deliver and set up your new handset at locations in markets such as Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Tampa and Washington, D.C. For the quarter, Sprint reported an operating profit of $501 million versus the prior year’s operating income of $520 million. The company is focusing to improve quality of its network, data speeds, quality of phone calls, and reliability of text messages. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast a nine-cent loss.

Sprint has aggressively targeted new customers with competitively priced rate plans that impacted average revenue per user, which dropped $6.59 year-over-year on the postpaid side to $55.48, but managed to increase 43 cents on the prepaid side to $27.81.

On the heels of a massive management shakeup, Sprint posted mixed first fiscal quarter financial results with just enough positive to get investors excited.

Sprint added 675,000 customers last quarter, ending June with 56.8 million subscribers.

Sprint chief Marcelo Claure may have done a lot to clean house and keep his customers from leaving, but it’s clear that there’s still a lot of work left to go before people stop abandoning ship.

T-Mobile has officially surpassed Sprint to become the third-biggest mobile carrier in the US. With total liquidity of United States dollars 6.6 billion at the end of June and another USD 1.3 billion available under vendor financing for the purchase of 2.5 GHz network equipment, Sprint said it does not expect to raise additional capital in the foreseeable future, nor does it expect to sell any spectrum.

Chief network officer John Saw was promoted to chief technology officer.