14 DAY TRIAL // Wireless carrier Sprint Nextel has announced today the financial results for the second quarter of the ongoing year and has posted consolidated net operating revenues of $8.1 billion, along with a net loss of $384 million and diluted loss per share of 13 cents. According to the company, it managed to register Free Cash Flow of $676 million in the time frame, as well as a total of $1.5 billion for the first six months of the ongoing year. Sprint has also announced that at the end of the quarter it had a number of 48.8 million customers, which includes 34.4 million post-paid subscribers (25.1 million on CDMA, 8.3 million on iDEN, and 1.0 million Power Source users who utilize both networks).
The $8.1 billion in consolidated net operating revenues Sprint registered in the three-month period represented a 1 percent drop compared to the first quarter of the year, and a 10 percent decrease year on year. The company says that its prepaid revenues have gone up, while the postpaid ones have seen a decrease. When it comes to the number of prepaid subscribers, the carrier says that it accounts for 5.0 million users, 4.4 million of which use its iDEN network, while 600,000 are on the CDMA one. The company's number of wireless customers went down by 257,000 in the quarter.
“In the second quarter, we made further progress on our efforts to enhance financial stability, improve the customer experience and reinvigorate the brand,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel CEO. “The widespread visibility surrounding our record-breaking June launch of the Palm Pre handset gave us an unprecedented opportunity to showcase these improvements to customers as 'a new Sprint'. They saw a 3G network described by PC World magazine as the most reliable among competitors, key satisfaction and performance metrics in customer care improving for 18 straight months, advertising that won the top international award in Cannes, and a stable balance sheet with 2009 long-term debt maturities paid and enough cash on hand to cover maturities through 2011.”
Even so, the churn rate was lower than during the first quarter of the year, only 2.05 percent compared to 2.25 percent in Q1, though higher than in the second quarter of last year, when it was of 1.98 percent. The carrier's wireless service revenue was of $6.4 billion, remaining at the same level sequentially, yet 9 percent lower than a year ago. Wireless post-paid ARPU remained at $56, while prepaid ARPU reached $34, up from the $31 in the first quarter of 2009 and from the $30 in the second quarter of last year. Based on these results, the company expects to see improvements in both post-paid and total subscriber full-year losses for the ongoing year, compared to the previous one.