Sprint on Tuesday was overtaken by T-Mobile US in terms of overall customers, relegating it to fourth spot in the U.S. telco market.
Sprint added 675,000 subscribers during its fiscal first quarter, as 310,000 postpaid additions and 731,000 wholesale and affiliate net additions offset a 366,000 decline prepaid customers. That left it with 56.8 million subscribers at the end of June.
It represents a big improvement for Sprint: in the same period a year earlier, the company shed 220,000 customers, leaving it with 53.3 million overall.
Despite the better performance, it was not good enough to hold T-Mobile back any longer. Last week, T-Mobile confirmed it added 2.1 million new customers over the same period, giving it 58.9 million in total.
On the financial side, Sprint’s revenue fell 8.7% on-year to US$8 billion; however, operating expenses fell to $7.5 billion from $8.3 billion a year ago, which resulted in adjusted EBITDA improving 14% to $2.1 billion.
"Sprint has made meaningful progress in our turnaround," insisted chief executive Marcelo Claure, in a statement.
Higher interest expenses led to Sprint posting a quarte rly net loss of $20 million, compared to a year earlier profit of $23 million.
Despite being dumped into fourth place, Sprint’s improving customer trends and lower operating expenses prompted it to raise its full-year guidance.
The company now expects full-year adjusted EBITDA to come in at $7.2 billion-$7.6 billion, up from an earlier outlook of $6.5 billion-$6.9 billion.
"Going forward, we are confident in our plan to leverage our unique spectrum assets to make our network a competitive advantage, aggressively reduce operating costs, and utilise our business relationships and assets to fund our turnaround," Claure said.
