Sprint Corp. continued to add mainstream customers in the June
quarter as its cancellation rate hit a record low, while the
struggling wireless provider's loss was smaller than Wall Street
expected.
Shares of Sprint, down 19.5% this year, added 4.8% in premarket
trading.
The company said it added 310,000 mainstream customers in the
quarter, compared with a loss of 181,000 customers in the
prior-year period.
Sprint said it lost 12,000 phone customers in the quarter,
though it added customers in both May and June, representing its
first monthly phone additions in nearly two years.
Sprint's churn rate, a measure of service cancellations, for
mainstream customers was 1.56%, the best in its history.
Sprint has been able to stanch the bleeding in its customer base
recently, but concerns over its cash have circulated as the company
needs money to further overhaul its lagging network and to bid in a
key auction of wireless licenses expected for early 2016.
For the quarter ended June 30, Sprint reported a loss of $20
million, or a penny a share, compared with a prior-year profit of
$23 million, or a penny a share.
Revenue fell 8.7% to $8.03 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast a nine-cent loss on
revenue of $8.31 billion.
On Monday, Sprint said Chief Financial Officer Joseph Eutenauer
would step down after holding the post for more than four years
through a period of financial distress. He will be replaced by
Tarek Robbiati, most recently the CEO of FlexiGroup Ltd., an
Australian consumer-finance company.
Write to Chelsey Dulaney at Chelsey.Dulaney@wsj.com
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