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In the first earnings release since the Softbank deal, Sprint (S) hit key milestones in several important areas. Sprint swung to a profit in the third quarter, enjoying $383 million in black ink. However, that's largely thanks to a one-time $1.4 billion investment gain from Clearwire's sale. Sprint also put up its best-ever postpaid average revenue per user of $64.28. The No. 3 domestic carrier also moved 1.4 million iPhones during the quarter, which was flat sequentially. Sprint recently shut down the Nextel network, and is already beginning to see cost savings being generated.
On the flip side, Sprint continues to lose subscribers to rivals, with 360,000 postpaid customers calling it quits. That was better than feared, but still bad news. Some of these customer losses are related to the Nextel shutdown, since many had joint corporate accounts on the Nextel platform. CEO Dan Hesse thinks this will continue through mid 2014.
This year has kept Sprint quite busy, what with all the activity around Softbank, DISH Network, and Clearwire. Now that everything has mostly settled, Sprint can start focusing on the future.
In this segment of Tech Teardown, Erin Kennedy discusses Sprint's latest earnings results with Evan Niu, CFA, our tech and telecom bureau chief.
