Sprint sees $874m quarterly operating loss

US operator Sprint has posted an operating loss of $874m for the quarter ended June 30, 2013. The figure takes into account non-cash charges of $623m related to the shutdown of the Nextel iDEN platform. Accelerated depreciation of assets also accounted for approximately $430m of the loss.

But Sprint’s wireless service revenue increased by eight per cent year on year in the quarter to $7.2bn; the operator’s highest-ever quarterly revenue. The firm also said that its postpaid ARPU was its “best ever” this quarter at $64.20.

The operator was officially acquired by Japanese operator SoftBank during the quarter and also closed its own acquisition of US wimax player Clearwire as well as radio spectrum from US Cellular.

“This is a historic time for Sprint. We recently shut down the Nextel platform and completed the Clearwire, SoftBank and US Cellular transactions,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO.

“In the second quarter, we achieved record levels in Sprint platform postpaid subscribers, service revenue and postpaid ARPU, and increased our 4G LTE footprint.”

The operator added that it made strong progress on its Network Vision 3G upgrade and LTE deployment project during the quarter. It shut down the Nextel iDEN platform on June 30, 2013, which Sprint said enables significant future improvement to its cost structure. Over four million Nextel subscribers moved to the Sprint platform since Network Vision commenced in early 2011, the operator added.