Earnings Preview: Sprint Nextel reports 3Q results

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Sprint Nextel Corp. is scheduled to report third-quarter results Thursday morning. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.

OVERVIEW: Sprint Nextel, the nation's third-largest wireless provider, continues to try regain its footing in the wireless industry, even as competitors AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are gaining subscribers in great chunks.

AT&T said it added 2 million customers in the third quarter while Verizon said it gained 1.2 million. As most U.S. residents who want a cell phone have one already, much of those gains likely came at the expense of Sprint and No. 4 provider, T-Mobile.

Sprint, which fell behind following its 2005 acquisition of Nextel Communications Inc., has tried to rebound through a drastic improvement in customer service and an improved lineup of handsets, including Palm Inc.'s Pre and HTC Corp.'s Hero, which uses Google Inc.'s Android open source software.

Sprint this week said it will begin selling on an exclusive basis the Palm Pixi, a smaller version of the Pre, next month.

The company last month began offering a cell phone plan that would provide unlimited calls to other mobile phones, as well as unlimited data services, starting at $70 a month.

Analysts will be interested to see how these efforts have slowed the constant migration of Sprint customers away from the company. It lost a net of 257,000 subscribers in the second quarter, including 991,000 customers who sign annual contracts and generally generate the most revenue.

They're also wanting to see if Sprint's Boost Mobile brand, which has offset some of those losses by attracting customers who pay for cell service from month to month, will continue to do well in the face of price cuts by other prepaid competitors.

BY THE NUMBERS: Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect Sprint Nextel to post a fully reported loss of 14 cents per share on $8.1 billion in revenue. In the same quarter last year, it lost 11 cents per share on $8.8 billion in revenue.

ANALYST TAKE: Oppenheimer Research analyst Tim Horan predicted another weak quarter for Sprint in a note to clients Wednesday. He said that the company's improved lineup of handsets likely slowed the loss of postpaid subscribers to 825,000 during the quarter but required higher subsidies that hurt profits.

Craig Moffett, an analyst for Bernstein Research, said that while the smaller customer loss is welcome, it's still a significant percentage of Sprint's base. Also, competitors have begun to match Sprint's price reductions for Boost Mobile, which will reduce its advantage in the marketplace and possibly require further efforts to attract customers.

"What one is left with is a business with very high fixed costs that has already made deep, and possibly unsustainable, cuts to its cost structure and capital spending levels," Moffett wrote. "Even slowing rates of subscriber losses will translate into continued margin declines in the future. Barring a major increase in its share of industry gross additions, Sprint's operating trajectory is largely set, in our view."

WHAT'S AHEAD: Sprint Nextel last week announced it will purchase affiliate iPCS Inc. for $426 million in cash.

Schaumburg, Ill.-based iPCS, which serves 700,000 direct customers in a swath of the Midwest, has filed numerous lawsuits against Sprint in recent years to stop activities it feels infringe on its exclusive right to use the Sprint brand in its markets. Once the acquisition is completed, those lawsuits go away.

STOCK PERFORMANCE: Sprint shares lost 14 percent of their value during the third quarter to $3.95. Shares have continued to decline since then, closing at $3.17 on Tuesday.

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