Sprint may have posted better-than-expected first quarter earnings today, but the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier is losing customers at an increasing clip.
Sprint reported a loss of $151 million (4 cents per share) in Q1 2014, which beat Wall Street’s expectations and was far lower than its $643 million loss at this time last year. But the carrier also suffered a net loss of 467,000 subscribers, up by 52,000 from Q1 2013.
Though Sprint’s stock is up more than 10 percent today, the customers losses come as the company faces stiff competition from AT&T, Verizon and a recently-aggressive T-Mobile, whose CEO had something to say about Sprint’s earnings results:
Sounds like a lot of people took my advice to #SprintLikeHell
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) April 29, 2014
Sprint, which was acquired by SoftBank this past July, has shown interest in buying T-Mobile to create a more potent competitor to AT&T and Verizon. But at this point there are no formal proposals on the table.
Meanwhile, Sprint said Tuesday that its 4G LTE network now reaches 225 million people — though part of that subscriber loss could be due to the company’s struggles with its 4G rollout. It also noted that 3 million people have signed up for its new Framily Plan, which gives discounts to big groups and competes against new innovative deals offered from T-Mobile and AT&T.
In February, Sprint continued to slash jobs in the Seattle area by laying off 91 people from Clearwire, a company Sprint acquired last year.
