US wireless carrier Sprint announced its quarterly earnings for the opening quarter of 2012 and, as expected, the results were less than stellar. The carrier reported a disappointing net loss of $863 million and a diluted net loss of $.29 per share. As a comparison, the carrier posted a net loss of $439 million and a diluted net loss of $.15 per share in the same quarter last year. Sprint took a big hit from the accelerated shutdown of its Nextel network.
There is some good news for the carrier. Wireless service revenue continues to climb and reached $7.2 billion in the quarter, a 7 percent year over year increase. Sprint also added 1.1 million net subscribers and now has 56 million total subscribers. The company added 263,000 postpaid net additions which is the eighth consecutive quarter with postpaid subscriber growth.
iPhone sales were strong and the carrier sold 1.5 million units in the quarter, 44 percent of which were to new customers. This number is good for Sprint, but pales in comparison to the 4.3 million sold by AT&T and the 3.2 million sold by Verizon Wireless.
Sprint’s 4G LTE network is also on track to be finished by the end of 2013. The carrier will blanket six major cities with LTE by mid-year including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Atlanta, Kansas City and Baltimore. The company plans to shut down 9,600 iDEN sites by the end of Q3 and will have 12,000 LTE sites live by the end of 2012.
[Via Sprint]