Sprint Corp. Inc. hung on to its third-place place rank in the
U.S. wireless business, though its revenue fell 7.7% for the first
three months of the year.
The Kansas City company had 57.1 million total subscribers at
the end of March, putting it just ahead of 56.8 million for rival
T-Mobile US Inc.
Sprint and T-Mobile have long struggled to catch up with
industry leaders Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc.
Sprint appeared in the stronger position when Japanese technology
giant SoftBank Corp. acquired it in 2013. But T-Mobile moved more
aggressively, stealing the customers that Sprint had hoped to
attract.
Not all customers are equal in value to a company and Sprint
said it added 211,000 mainstream subscribers in the quarter,
compared with 30,000 in the previous quarter and a loss of 231,000
a year earlier.
But that was driven primarily by an increase of 349,000 tablet
subscribers. Sprint lost 201,000 phone customers, compared with a
loss of 205,000 the quarter before and 693,000 in the prior-year
quarter.
Sprint is in the midst of a turnaround attempt led by Chief
Executive Marcelo Claure, who took the helm in August as the
company abandoned plans to acquire T-Mobile. The carrier has been
dogged by a network whose quality has lagged rivals' amid a complex
and prolonged overhaul.
In all, Sprint reported a loss of $224 million, or six cents a
share, widening from a year-earlier loss of $151 million, or four
cents a share.
Revenue fell to $8.28 billion from $9 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a per-share loss of
six cents and revenue of $8.47 billion.
Sprint's total churn rate was 1.8%, compared with 2.3% in the
previous quarter.
Write to Angela Chen at angela.chen@dowjones.com and Thomas
Gryta at thomas.gryta@wsj.com
Access Investor Kit for Deutsche Telekom AG
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=DE0005557508
Access Investor Kit for SoftBank Corp.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=JP3436100006
Access Investor Kit for AT&T, Inc.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US00206R1023
Access Investor Kit for Deutsche Telekom AG
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US2515661054
Access Investor Kit for Verizon Communications, Inc.
Visit
http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US92343V1044
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires