Sprint just announced its earnings for Q2 2012 — and I use the word “earnings” loosely. The carrier is reporting a net loss of $1.4 billion, a diluted net loss of $0.46 per share, and an operating loss of $629 million.
It’s not all bad news for Sprint, though. Revenue for the quarter was $7.3 billion (albeit about $1.4 billion below analysts’ expectations) and it saw postpaid net additions of 442,000. It sold 1.5 million iPhones last quarter, which isn’t terrible, but still behind AT&T’s 3.6 million units and Verizon’s 2.7 million. 40 percent of the iPhones sold went to new postpaid customers.
When asked about the the giant leap of faith Sprint made on the iPhone last year, CEO Dan Hesse remains optimistic. “We are beginning to see benefits from the iPhone,” he said during the earnings call. “Early life churn is better than on other smartphones, calls to care are significantly lower than on other devices, service and repair and returns are all lower than on other devices. All the important early metrics indicate we made the right decision.”
While overall second quarter results are rather abysmal, Sprint is slightly increasing its 2012 OIBDA forecast. “The Sprint platform achieved best ever postpaid ARPU and customer churn that, combined with disciplined customer acquisition and cost management, contributed to our Adjusted OIBDA* of $1.45 billion,” said Hesse. “Based on this performance, we are raising the 2012 Adjusted OIBDA* forecast to between $4.5 billion and $4.6 billion.”
Sprint also made a point to mention that unlike its competitors, it will not be launching shared data plans in the foreseeable future.