With its second quarter results released yesterday, Sprint Nextel closes the book on its former self in several ways.
Along with the end of the quarter came the shutdown of the Nextel network, soon followed by the closing of the Clearwire and Softbank transactions. Thus their actual numbers have a bit less relevance than usual.
However, for the second quarter total revenue rose sequentially to $8.88 billion, beating expectations of about $8.69 billion. Adjusted OIBDA, on the other hand, fell sequentially to $1.4 billion.
In wireless they added some 1.2 million iPhone customers, but of course lost some 2 million Nextel customers as the old network finally got shut down. For their LTE rollout, they now have 20,000 sites online reaching 151 cities and nationwide. They expect their LTE network to be reaching 200 million in population by the end of the year.
As for wireline, it didn’t even get a mention in the text of the earnings PR until the tables at the end, reflecting Sprint’s priorities in pushing its wireless business. However, the wireline business did see a slight improvement over the prior quarter, at least temporarily arresting its long term slide. Revenues rose sequentially to $910 million on the strength of higher voice revenues, while adjusted OIBDA was also up a bit to $129 million.
But now the focus turns to what Softbank will do with the balance of the year as it takes charge. How will Sprint’s plans evolve from here to best take advantage of the new faces on the board, the new capital structure, and all that spectrum?
Whatever they do, however, will almost certainly not take place as fast as folks think it ought to – that’s the nature of today’s media environment.
This article was authored by Rob Powell and was originally posted on Telecomramblings.com
Rob Powell is founder & editor of Telecom Ramblings, which was set up in 2008. The website is dedicated to discussing trends and developments in the telecom industry.