Sprint posted a first-quarter 2013 loss of $643 million on Wednesday, besting Wall Street expectations and narrowing losses over Q1 of 2012, when the company reported a loss of $863 million.
For the quarter ending March 31, 2013, Sprint sold 5 million smartphones, 1.5 million of which were iPhones. That’s down from the 2.2 million iPhones that Sprint sold in Q4 of 2012.
Unfortunately, the most troubling piece of information coming from today’s earnings report is that Sprint saw a decline in its subscriber base during Q1 of 2013. From January through March, Sprint shed approximately 560,000 subscribers.
Nonetheless, shares of Sprint didn’t flinch much today, as optimism remains that the company will continue to narrow losses. There’s also hope that the nation’s third largest carrier will be acquired by either DISH Network or SoftBank.
“This is a transformative year for Sprint and we’ve gotten off to a good start,” says Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “Record Sprint platform service revenue and subscriber levels fueled our performance. We achieved significant Adjusted OIBDA growth while investing heavily to improve our network, expanding our 4G LTE footprint and offering customers the best smartphones with truly unlimited data plans.”
