Sprint Nextel Corp. today reported fourth quarter consolidated net operating revenue of $9 billion and full year 2012 consolidated net operating revenue of $35.3 billion. Sprint reported record quarterly and annual Sprint platform wireless service revenues of nearly $7 billion and $27.1 billion, respectively. Driven by increasing postpaid ARPU and continued Sprint platform subscriber growth, wireless service revenues for the Sprint platform grew 12 percent year-over-year for the quarter and nearly 15 percent for the full year.
The company reported a net loss of $1.3 billion and a diluted net loss of $.44 per share for the fourth quarter of 2012 as compared to a net loss of $1.3 billion and a diluted net loss of $.43 per share in the fourth quarter of 2011. Sprint’s fourth quarter 2012 results include accelerated depreciation of approximately $400 million, or negative $.13 per share (pre-tax), primarily related to Network Vision, including the expected shutdown of the Nextel platform, and $45 million or negative $.01 per share (pre-tax) related to impacts from Hurricane Sandy.
The Sprint platform postpaid subscriber base grew for the eleventh consecutive quarter, with net additions of 401,000 driven by a postpaid Nextel recapture rate of 51 percent, or 333,000 subscribers, and strong 4G LTE smartphone sales. Sprint platform prepaid net additions equaled 525,000 due in part to the best ever quarterly prepaid Nextel recapture rate of 50 percent, or 188,000 subscribers. Sprint sold approximately 2.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter with 38 percent purchased by new customers. As of the end of the fourth quarter, Sprint had sold more than 4 million 4G LTE smartphones.
“Sprint’s strong performance was fueled by record wireless service revenue on the Sprint platform due to year-over-year postpaid ARPU growth and Sprint platform net additions,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “As a result, quarterly Adjusted OIBDA performance improved year-over-year in spite of significant cost increases related to Network Vision and the iPhone, both of which are key investments for our business that we expect will improve the customer experience and lead to growth in the years ahead.”
Sprint continues to make significant progress on Network Vision deployment. The number of sites that are either ready for construction or already underway has grown to more than 19,500 – approximately half the total number of sites to be upgraded. To date more than 8,000 sites are on air and meeting speed and coverage enhancement targets. Recent weekly construction starts are up 56 percent from the third quarter. Sprint continues to expect to have 12,000 sites on air by the end of the first quarter of 2013.
As part of Network Vision, Sprint has launched 4G LTE in 58 cities and expects that 4G LTE will be available in nearly 170 additional cities in the coming months. During 2012 Sprint launched 15 4G LTE devices including Apple iPad mini and iPad with Retina Display in the fourth quarter.
During the fourth quarter, Sprint raised additional debt financing of nearly $2.3 billion and used the proceeds to retire nearly $1.2 billion of 2014 debt maturities and more than $1.1 billion of 2015 maturities. The remaining outstanding principal balances of Sprint’s 2013, 2014 and 2015 maturities are $366 million, $247 million and $566 million, respectively. Sprint also received $3.1 billion from SoftBank in exchange for a newly issued 1 percent, seven-year convertible bond related to the companies’ pending merger.
As of December 31, 2012, the company’s liquidity was approximately $9.5 billion consisting of $8.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and $1.3 billion of undrawn borrowing capacity available under its revolving bank credit facility. Additionally, the company has borrowed $296 million to-date of available funding under the secured equipment credit facility, reducing the remaining undrawn availability to $704 million. Sprint generated $216 million of cash flow from operating activities and negative Free Cash Flow of $1.3 billion in the quarter.
The company expects 2013 Adjusted OIBDA to be between $5.2 billion and $5.5 billion.
More details via Sprint here.
Sprint’s gamble on buying 15M iPhones over 4 years may have actually saved its bacon.
I wish iphones were made of bacon
Lmao!
They really didn’t have a choice. It was either get the iPhone or die a slow death like BlackBerry (RIM). What saves T-Mobiles butt is that so many people were on their network already with unlocked or jailbroken iPhones.