14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Sprint Nextel did better than anticipated during the first quarter of the ongoing year. Although the company posted a net loss of $594 million for the time frame, translated into 21 cents per share, higher than the $505 million, or 18 cents-a-share loss it registered in the same period a year ago, the company says that, severance-related charge of $327 million aside, its profit for the first three months of 2009 would have been of 3 cents a share, which is by far better than the 5 cent loss the company was expected to post.
Recent layoffs helped it do better in the quarter, says Sprint, while its pre-paid service Boost Mobile, as well as the $50 unlimited plan, have attracted more customers, leveraging its performance in the time frame. According to the carrier, it managed to add a net 764,000 new customers. At the same time, the company only lost 182,000 net customers, less than half of the 490,000 it was expected to lose. On the other hand, the wireless operator lost 1.25 million contract customers, though previous forecasts pointed towards a 1.1 million loss.
The third largest carrier in the country has seen its revenue going down 12 percent to $8.21 billion, compared to the $9.33 billion posted a year ago. Wireless service revenues for the first quarter were 10 percent lower on a yearly basis, and 2 percent lower compared to the previous quarter, reaching $6.4 billion. Sprint also announced that wireless post-paid ARPU (Average revenue per user) remained at the same level of $56, both on a yearly and on a quarterly basis, while prepaid ARPU in the first quarter was $31, compared to $29 in the same period a year ago and $30 in the fourth quarter of 2008. The company stated that post-paid churn went up to 2.25 percent from the 2.16 percent registered in the fourth quarter, yet it went down from the 2.45 percent seen a year ago, and the increase was driven by the economic crisis. During the first quarter, Boost churn was of 6.86 percent, down from the 8.20 percent the previous quarter, and from 9.93 percent a year ago. The introduction of the Boost Monthly Unlimited plan for $50 is said to have helped the churn improve.
When it comes to data revenues during Q1 2009, the operator says they made up over $15 of overall post-paid ARPU. In addition, CDMA data ARPU went up by 5 percent compared to Q4 2008, going over $18, while accounting for more than 31 percent of total CDMA ARPU.