Sprint Report $865m Loss In Q1 2010: Peg Hopes On HTC EVO 4G

Sprint's first quarter 2010 financial results are out, and they don't make for happy reading if you're a shareholder of the carrier.  The company has reported net operating revenues of $8.1 billion, working out to a net loss of $865 million, while it's still haemorrhaging subscribers too: 75,000 net jumped ship in the three month period.  Still, Sprint are managing to make lemonade out of the numbers: that 75k loss, for instance, is a whopping 670,000 fewer than their disastrous Q1 2009 results, net revenues were up and they've still got $4.4bn in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

"We continue to make progress in improving the business" says Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, pointing to the fact that "customer satisfaction has improved for the ninth consecutive quarter" as a reason for the dramatic reduction in subscriber churn.  Still, Sprint's push to offer the cheapest service means that retail wireless service revenues increased by less than 1-percent from the same period a year ago, to $6.4bn, though that was around 3-percent higher than the previous quarter.

In fact, post-pay subscribers are paying on average a dollar less, while pre-pay user ARPU worked out to $4 less, in comparison to Q1 2009.  Sprint are hoping that the incoming HTC EVO 4G, the first WiMAX smartphone, will help turn around their fortunes.