Sprint may have a new CEO, but it’s still putting out the same dismal quarterly earnings reports. In its fiscal Q2 2014 earnings released Monday, Sprint posted a net loss of $0.19 per share, or more than triple the consensus estimate of a loss of $0.06 per share. The company also missed on its revenue expectations as its quarterly revenues of $8.49 billion were less than the consensus estimate of $8.59 billion.
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Perhaps the most discouraging number for Sprint, however, was that it lost a total of 272,000 postpaid subscribers on the quarter even as rivals Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T all posted impressive postpaid gains over the same period. And as if that number weren’t grim enough, the company also announced that it’s going to cut 2,000 jobs.
Of course, anyone who’s been following Sprint knows that it’s been a disaster for years — it lost millions of subscribers in the wake of its botched merger with Nextel and its decision to support WiMAX over LTE in the early going set it back years. The carrier also suffers from having the slowest LTE network in the country and its coverage similarly leaves a lot to be desired. And finally, unlike rival T-Mobile, Sprint has also failed to develop a competitive marketing message — its most recent “Framily plan” campaign was mercifully axed by new CEO Marcelo Claure very soon after he took over the company this past summer.
While it would obviously be foolish to blame Claure for the carrier’s problems, its amazing talent for losing postpaid subscribers and for consistently underperforming in network quality tests means that he’s got a lot of work cut out for him.
