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Strong postpaid, wholesale customer additions more than offset prepaid losses.
Sprint on Tuesday reported a narrower fiscal third quarter net loss, driven by aggressive cost cuts and improving customer trends.
In the three months ended December 2015, the U.S. operator added 501,000 postpaid subscribers, and 481,000 wholesale and affiliate subscribers, which more than offset prepaid subscriber losses of 491,000.
That left Sprint with a total subscriber base of 58.4 million by the end of the quarter, up from 57.9 million sequentially and 54.9 million year-on-year. That still leaves Sprint trailing T-Mobile US, which recently revealed that ended 2015 with 63.3 million subscribers.
"It’s clear from our quarterly results that we are making great progress on achieving our goals," said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure.
"Revenue has stabilised, costs are coming out faster than expected, [and] postpaid net additions were the highest in three years," he said.
Sprint generated revenue of US$8.11 billion (€7.48 billion), down 10% from fiscal Q3 2014, but up 2% sequentially. Operating costs fell by $785 million year-on-year, thanks to the company’s aggressive cost cutting programme, which aims to reduce expenses by at least $2 billion by the end of Sprint’s fiscal 2016, which runs to 31 March 2017.
As a result of the accelerated cost reductions, Sprint raised its full-year EBITDA guidance to $7.7 billion-$8 billion from its earlier forecast of $6.8 billion-$7.1 billion.
The company also raised its operating income guidance to $100 million-$300 million from its previous guidance of an operating loss of $50 million-$250 million.
"Our transformation is taking hold and the momentum is accelerating," said Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati. "Most importantly, we expect these cost reductions to be achieved without compromising network quality or impacting the customer experience."
Sprint’s operating loss shrank to $197 million from $2.54 billion a year earlier, when the company recorded $2.1 billion worth of writedowns. Meanwhile, Sprint’s net loss narrowed to $836 million from $2.38 billion a year earlier.
