Sprint gains 173,000 postpaid connections, but reports loss of $302m

Sprint has released its quarterly figures which demonstrated healthy gains in the postpaid business, up 173,000 connections, but did post a $302 million loss for the period.

Despite the loss, which compared to a net loss of $20 million for the same period last year, the financial markets reacted positively to the news, with share prices up around 21% at the time of writing. The current quarter included $113 million of non-recurring contract termination charges, related to the termination of the pre-existing wholesale arrangement with Ntelos.

“We had another quarter of solid progress in our turnaround with the highest first quarter postpaid phone net additions in nine years, the lowest postpaid phone churn in company history, and finally being postpaid net port positive against all three national carriers after five years” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “We also grew wireless net operating revenue year-over-year while aggressively reducing the cash operating expenses of the business and our network is performing better than ever.”

The quarter is now the fourth in a row which has seen the company grow postpaid phone connections, and was the highest net gain in nine years. This is a substantial pick up on the same period in 2015, which saw the company leak 12,000 connections. Churn rate was also down at 1.3%, the lowest in company history. Total net additions were 377,000 in the quarter, including postpaid net additions of 180,000, prepaid net losses of 331,000, and wholesale and affiliate net additions of 528,000.

The positive moves in the postpaid market come off the back of one of the company’s more successful marketing campaigns, featuring actor Paul Marcarelli, who previously featured in a Verizon marketing campaign. The ad has been viewed over 8 million times on YouTube and the company claims it has become postpaid net port positive against all three national carriers for the first time in five years.