U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel has just posted its results for Q2, and while it continues to prepare for a brighter future ahead, it reported widening losses. The loss was $1.4 billion, with negative EPS of $.46 per share, compared to a net loss of $847 million and a diluted net loss of $.28 per share in the second quarter of 2011, and failing to meet analyst expectations. Revenues were $8.8 billion, which were higher than analyst estimates. Operating loss is now $629 million.
The company says it sold 1.5 million iPhones in the quarter, some 40 percent to new postpaid customers.
As a point of comparison, iPhone sales at AT&T this last quarter totaled 3.7 million on overall smartphone sales of 5.1 million. Verizon sold 2.7 million iPhones in the last quarter on total smartphone sales of 5.9 million.
The iPhone, which Sprint first started to carry in the fourth quarter of 2011, remains central to the Sprint story, as does the company's plans for a future high-speed network. The company's stock has gone up by over 55 percent in the last six months, which Forbes attributes both to strong iPhone performance as well as "increasing optimism" about the company's Network Vision project, as the high-speed upgrade is called, as well as its LTE work. Rolling that out in a few markets already -- it's now launched 4G LTE in five major markets and 15 cities - has been a strong sign to the market that Sprint means to do what it says with its upgrade strategy.
Analysts had been expecting a loss per share of 40 cents, on revenues of $8.73 billion. That represents a wider loss than the actual loss per share for the same quarter a year ago, when the negative EPS was -28 cents per share.
In Q1, Sprint had also posted an operating loss ($255 million) but on the strength of 1.5 million iPhone sales -- 44% to new customers -- the company also reported 263,000 postpaid net additions, with 1 million net additions overall. Although Sprint came relatively late to the market after AT&T and later Verizon in offering the iPhone, it was clearly serving some pent-up demand: in Q1, nearly 42% of total iPhone sales were to subscribers new to Sprint.
More to come.
This story originally appeared in TechCrunch.
