Sprint Nextel Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 Results
Quarterly year-over-year Sprint platform postpaid ARPU growth of $3.69 is the best on record in the industry
Largest sequential increase in net operating revenues in more than five years
Sprint serves more than 55 million customers – highest level ever
1.6 million total net subscriber additions in the quarter – best since 2005
539,000 postpaid net additions on the Sprint platform in the quarter
Strong iPhone sales – 40 percent to new customers
Network Vision on schedule and on budget; six major cities to launch 4G LTE by mid-year with the addition of Kansas City and Baltimore
Adjusted OIBDA* of $842 million and the first year of Operating Income since 2006
The company’s fourth quarter 2011 earnings conference call will be held at 8 a.m. ET today. Participants may dial 800-938-1120 in the U.S. or Canada (706-634-7849 internationally) and provide the following ID: 40556064 or may listen via the Internet at www.sprint.com/investor.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BUSINESS WIRE), February 08, 2012 - Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) today reported Adjusted OIBDA* of $842 million for the fourth quarter and nearly $5.1 billion for the full year 2011. Wireless service revenues for the fourth quarter increased more than 7 percent year-over-year, driven by Sprint platform postpaid ARPU growth of $3.69 – the largest year-over-year increase on record across the U.S. wireless industry. Strong revenue growth and cost management partially offset the impact of increased equipment net subsidies and sales expense associated with the successful launch of the iPhone®. Forty percent of Sprint’s 1.8 million iPhone sales in the fourth quarter were to new customers. Based on internal estimates, including incremental costs associated with iPhone sales, the combined impact of iPhone and Network Vision costs reduced fourth quarter Adjusted OIBDA* margin, which was 10.8 percent, by approximately 8.8 percentage points.
The company reported total net subscriber additions of 1.6 million during the fourth quarter of 2011 – the best quarterly result in six years – bringing total ending subscribers to the highest level in the company’s history. Total postpaid net additions of 161,000 for the fourth quarter represent the tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvement and were driven by continued strength of the Sprint platform, which had net postpaid additions of 539,000. This is the seventh consecutive quarter of net postpaid subscriber growth on the Sprint platform.
Kind of disappointed by the 161,000 net postpaid adds. Was hoping to see north of 200,000. But they did add two more major cities to the initial lte launch list. Congrats if you're in Baltimore or Kansas City.
Looks like Hesse finally proves that if you have all the time in the world, you'll get things done. What about the part where they lose 1.3 billion dollars despite all this supposedly good news?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57373007-94/sprint-shows-customer-growth-posts-$1.3b-loss/
Kind of disappointed by the 161,000 net postpaid adds. Was hoping to see north of 200,000.
/shrug...What can ya do? The Sprint CDMA side did add over half a million postpaid subs. It's just that the boat anchor which is iDEN weighed them down by losing 378K postpaid subs. Quarterly postpaid additions and margins should show a marked improvement once iDEN is completely phased out.
*9,600 iden sites to be decommissioned by end of 2012.
*Most of the 3g phones sold since mid-2011 have 800mhz support built in.
Side note: Hesse was very glad to tell the analysts on the call that 2011 was the first year that Sprint was able to start raising prices. And was happy to note that customer service credits were down about $1 billion from prior years.
Like I said before, if they thicken their coverage in the areas that they serve so that they don't need in-area roaming, therefore reducing their roaming bill from about $1B to about $300M, reduce their service credits, kick out the unprofitable customers, reduce their site rentals after shutting down IDEN, reduce their operating expenses from running IDEN, they will be a very sound company. They don't need to serve every corner of this country, they just need to serve the areas they sell their service to second to none. With a reasonable roaming allowance and reasonable roaming fees they can be a force to be reckoned with.
I think that in conjuction with Dish and or DirectTV they might even make an OTT play, just to get back on their former cable friends.
Keep on Doing what your Doing Mr Hesse.....Soon as iDen is gone, all legacy of that F*CK UP Gary Forsee will be wiped out and Sprint will be running completely under Hesse's Vision he will then have full control of Sprint future.
It will be good to be back to managing 1 Nationwide Network....Anyone with common sense this should serve as confirmation Sprint's the little engine that could!
And I like that Sprint is shedding more and more deadbeats which are more targeted for Boost and Virgin anyway which continue to have record low Prepaid Churn....
For the quarter, Sprint reported postpaid churn of 1.98 percent, compared to 1.86 percent for the year-ago period and 1.91 percent for the third quarter of 2011. Quarterly postpaid churn increased year-over-year and sequentially due to higher involuntary deactivations which occur when Sprint disconnects a customer due to lack of payment or violations of terms and conditions. This is a temporary increase, the majority of which was associated with pricing actions taken primarily through indirect channels. We tightened our credit standards during the third and fourth quarters to stem further impacts of these types of promotional activities.
After listening to the conference call, I have to conclude that Mr. Hesse has balls of steel. That's the right approach.
The legacy of Gary Failsee will be gone when Sprint is consistently profitable. They aren't out of the woods yet. They have made it farther already than I thought they would after the Nextel debacle.
Network Vision is a very ballsy approach, and they're showing lots of balls to eschew Wall Street's idea of what they should do. It's a memo I wish Whitacre Tower would get.
Network Vision is a very ballsy approach, and they're showing lots of balls to eschew Wall Street's idea of what they should do. It's a memo I wish Whitacre Tower would get.
I like the report, I think they are on the right path and I'm really contemplating buying a few thousand shares to take a shot. There is certainly a risk but a decent upside in a couple of years I would think.
Sadly, Wall St once again is not impressed and the stock is down.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8170UH20120208
"It's still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations," said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint's targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.
The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.
Sprint's rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc (T.N) also struggled in the fourth quarter with rising costs.
Sprint added 161,000 total net subscribers in the quarter compared with the average expectation for 272,000 additions from eight analyst estimates compiled by Reuters.
On the conference call they said they also plan to borrow another $5 to $7 billion.
That sounds like the total borrowing to complete network vision. The financial presentation that accompanies the call shows that they need to borrow an addition $1 to $3 billion. They already raised $4 billion in 2011. Some of that was used to pay off debt that was due in 2012. The rest was for network vision and the iphone.
I like the report, I think they are on the right path and I'm really contemplating buying a few thousand shares to take a shot. There is certainly a risk but a decent upside in a couple of years I would think.
Sadly, Wall St once again is not impressed and the stock is down.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8170UH20120208
"It's still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations," said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint's targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.
The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.
Sprint's rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc (T.N) also struggled in the fourth quarter with rising costs.
Sprint added 161,000 total net subscribers in the quarter compared with the average expectation for 272,000 additions from eight analyst estimates compiled by Reuters.
Wall Street simply cannot separate iDen from the rest of Sprint.....I doubt some analyst even understand they're two completely different technologies...
iDen is everything that's been dragging Sprint down in Quarterly Financials...iPhone and Network Vision are short term hits but long term gains. iDen is nothing but an increasing liability as its subscriber base continues to dwindle, but hopefully that will be mitigated soon with the sun-setting of iDen towers.
Completely remove iDen from this report and Sprint had a killer Quarter as far as Growth.
/shrug...What can ya do? The Sprint CDMA side did add over half a million postpaid subs. It's just that the boat anchor which is iDEN weighed them down by losing 378K postpaid subs. Quarterly postpaid additions and margins should show a marked improvement once iDEN is completely phased out.
Sort of. Sprint's CDMA "adds" include a lot of customers upgrading iDEN phones to CDMA devices. That isn't exactly iDEN acting as an anchor or CDMA doing well. That's the natural upgrade process. That would be like AT&T saying, "UMTS added x + y customers while GSM lost y customers. Clearly we would be ridiculously popular except that GSM is weighing us down" when really it was just customers upgrading their phone to a new handset.
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Sprint's financials include more data than they have. It turns out, contrary to popular belief, Sprint's CDMA and iDEN post-pay churn are nearly identical and have been for a good while. That lends creedence to the idea that the majority of CDMA "adds" are iDEN customers upgrading their handset.
Once iDEN is gone, Sprint's CDMA "adds" might end up drying up a bit as they will no longer have iDEN users who are upgrading their handsets getting counted as "adds".
Wall Street simply cannot separate iDen from the rest of Sprint.....I doubt some analyst even understand they're two completely different technologies...
Or Wall St realizes that those CDMA "adds" aren't actually adds, but iDEN users upgrading their phone.
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It's also interesting to note that Sprint sold the least number of iPhones proportional to its size. Verizon sold iPhones to 4% of its customer base, AT&T to 7.4% of its customer base, and Sprint to 3.2% of its customer base.
Wall Street simply cannot separate iDen from the rest of Sprint.....I doubt some analyst even understand they're two completely different technologies...
iDen is everything that's been dragging Sprint down in Quarterly Financials...iPhone and Network Vision are short term hits but long term gains. iDen is nothing but an increasing liability as its subscriber base continues to dwindle, but hopefully that will be mitigated soon with the sun-setting of iDen towers.
Completely remove iDen from this report and Sprint had a killer Quarter as far as Growth.
Oh Sprint please STOP SELLING iDen HANDSETS.....
We should be saying Stop Selling Iphones Sprint can not afford the subsidies needed to continue doing this.
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Originally Posted by marioc21
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