Sprint Nextel (S) has announced it intends to retire $2.28 billion worth of debt due to mature in 2014 and 2015. The effective retirement date for that debt is Nov. 19, 2012, just five days after Sprint will issue $2.28 billion worth of 6% senior notes to come due in 2022. The notes being retired are about $1.170 billion at 5.95% and $1.110 billion at 7.375%.
The last time Sprint issued debt was in August, when it offered $1.5 billion worth of 7% bonds to mature in 2020, according to Bloomberg, which reports Sprint currently has $20.5 billion in bonds and term loans.
Sprint is the nation's third-largest mobile carrier, well behind front-runners Verizon (VZ 1.17%) and AT&T (T 1.02%). It has recently entered into a $20 billion deal with Japanese mobile operator SoftBank that will inject a badly needed $8 billion toward Sprint's 4G LTE network build-out.
