Sprint's Q1 2014 Results Show a Net Loss

On April 29, Sprint revealed its earnings for the first quarter of 2014. Unfortunately, both its earnings and subscriber total took a hit. Actually, Sprint made two announcements yesterday, in addition to its first quarter results, the carrier also confirmed that its 4G LTE and Sprint Spark services are now live in several locations around the U.S.

According to Sprint, its 4G LTE network is now active in 41 new cities that include Long Island, N.Y., Minneapolis, Minn., and Phoenix, Ariz. In addition, its new tri-band Sprint Spark LTE service is now available in Newark, N.J.; Oakland, Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Tacoma, Wash.; Waukegan, Ill.; and West Palm Beach, Fla.

That currently makes a total of 443 cities that Sprint’s LTE network is available in and markets running its Spark service. Sprint’s Spark service runs LTE on the following three bands, 25, 26, and 41 which relate to 1900 MHz, 850 MHz, and 2.5 GHz. There are a few tri-band smartphones on the market such as the Samsung Galaxy Mega.

Moving back to the financial side, Sprint reported an operating income of $420 million for the first quarter. Looking back on its previous quarter results, it appears that this could be Sprint’s best performance over the past seven years. Unfortunately, the numbers show that the mobile operator did lose $151 million, however Sprint claims that this represents a 77 percent improvement year-over-year.

The update on the subscriber side is also reporting a loss. Sprint revealed that all-in-all it lost close to half a million net customers in 2014’s first quarter. The breakdown is that the company lost 231,000 net postpaid subscribers and 364,000 net prepaid customers. One possible reason is that while Sprint was updating its network, there apparently was a lot of down time which frustrated its customers.

On the other hand, Sprint did gain 212,000 wholesale and affiliate customers which means that Sprint ended the first quarter with almost 54 million subscribers. The report also states that Sprint sold five million smartphones this quarter.

Sprint’s report also made mention of its Framily Group plans. It seems that the Framily plan has been growing at a much faster rate than any previous plan. Sprint claims that it already has nearly three million customers on the plan. Something that could see this grow even more is the fact that until now to join the Framily plan you had to visit one of its stores, however that will change soon, which could spark more interest in the plan.

Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, made the following comment, “In the quarter, operating revenue and Adjusted EBITDA both grew year-over-year even as investments in our network improvements continued. With the expected mid-year completion of the rip and replacement of our core 3G and voice network, the ongoing roll-out of Sprint Spark, and the evolution of Sprint Framily, we plan to build the best customer experience in the industry.”

It seems that Sprint had the makings of a mixed first quarter. On the positive side you have its Framily plan doing much better than expected with its three million customers, on the other hand it did lose subscribers and its earnings were in the red.

Looking ahead, Sprint does expect that the adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for 2014 to be between $6.7 and $6.9 billion with expenditures somewhere around the $8 billion mark.