Sprint Can It Still Disappoint?

Sprint (S) released its numbers this Monday morning. They lost just over 1 million customers. The ones that stayed are spending less money. The results looked bleak and surprised the street. The street was actually expecting better numbers which from sprint is an amazing assumption.

Management was almost clinical about the results. The press release dealt with the various metrics in a perfunctory manner. Qualitative comments were almost non existent. They want you to believe that they are laying the groundwork for the future and are addressing the various negatives and baggage that they are dragging about.

The one area where they almost made comments of substance was in capital spending. Read this quote:

”Capital investments in the quarter were primarily targeted at increasing capacity and enhancing capabilities. In the quarter, dropped and blocked calls declined at an annual double-digit rate on both the CDMA and iDEN networks.”

They left out any substantive numbers; just want you think that it’s getting better.
Management is in a quandary. They need to report numbers. The numbers are bad. They have clammed up.

Why the cone of silence if one can ask?