What to Expect From Sprint Earnings

Telecom & Wireless

Published: February 4, 2015 12:05 pm

Last Updated: April 28, 2020 9:57 am

Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) is scheduled to report its earnings before markets open on Thursday. The wireless carrier is expected to post an earnings per share (EPS) loss of $0.24 in the fiscal third quarter and a loss of $0.50 for the fiscal year. Among 30 analysts cited at MarketWatch, the average rating on the stock is Hold, with five Buys and one Overweight, compared with six Sell ratings and one Underweight rating.

Sprint has been aggressive in seeking new subscribers by attacking both its larger competitors with a promise to cut new subscribers’ bills from either Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) or AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) in half. Exactly how Sprint expects to make money from this promise is left as an exercise for the reader.

In the past few days there have been reports that Sprint is in discussions with RadioShack to acquire the leases to about half of RadioShack’s 4,300 company-operated stores in the United states. As we noted, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless carrier, T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE: TMUS), has a near-obligation to try to derail such a deal.

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Sprint said in November that it would fire 2,000 more employees and that it was reducing its consolidated adjusted EBITDA to $5.8 billion to $5.9 billion for the 2014 calendar year. Sprint is seeking to cut costs by $1.5 billion from 2014 levels, of which about $400 million is coming from staff reductions.

The stock has no price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio (Sprint is posting losses remember) and the price-to-book ratio is 0.72. With a consensus target price of $7.28, the company’s potential upside based on Tuesday’s closing price of $4.49 is 62%. This is value trap territory, and given the stock’s 42% price drop over the past 12 months, chances of capitalizing on that potential appear to be slim.

With losses projected out through next year, the most we expect to hear from Sprint tomorrow is some happy talk about how many subscribers have been corralled and how everything is going according to plan. Right.

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