Sprint Earnings… Viability Question Remains Front and Center (S, AAPL)

Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) may be ticking up marginally after reporting its quarterly loss.  Sprint turned in a report showing a loss of -$0.35 EPS, narrowly better than the -$0.37 EPS consensus from Thomson Reuters.  The OIBDA margin was 9.5% and the net subscribers were only 161,000 in the quarter.  We were expecting north of 200,000 subscribers after looking at research calls.  Is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) to blame here?

The loss widening out was based upon the higher costs of the iPhone.  If our math is correct, the narrower loss is simply because they sold fewer iPhones against expectations.  How is that possible.  If one carrier is not going to drop your call with excess capacity, it is Sprint.

The company is taking a loss up front to get a gain in ongoing monthly subscriber service fees. Shares were apparently up over 4% earlier on, but the stock is up 1.6% at $2.49 in the pre-market at 8:43 AM EST.

With a 52-week range of $2.10 to $6.45, is it fair to still wonder if Sprint is truly a viable company.  The cost savings from network consolidations and its other operating cost efforts are only part of the help.  Sprint needs to figure out a way to win more subscribers, and more importantly it needs to ensure that it can make those customers profitable under even a base case subscriber scenario.

JON C. OGG