Sprint Finally Turns Profit But Loses 334,000 Subscribers

It’s taken almost 10 years but Sprint has finally turned a profit.

The wireless carrier on Wednesday morning posted $23 million in net income, marking its best non-transactional-related quarter in more than seven years, the Kansas City Business Journal reported.

Operating income was in the black by $519 million, compared to a loss of $896 million a year ago. Revenue, however, dropped somewhat, from $8.9 billion to $8.8 billion. Still, that number was more than what Thomson Reuters analysts expected – they were projecting revenue of $8.7 billion.

The bad news for Sprint came in its customer churn. Subscribers defected from the operator at a rate of 2.05 percent. That comes to 334,000 people, 245,000 of whom were postpaid users. The numbers were than the 1.83 percent reported a year ago and lower compared to last quarter’s 2.11 percent, Reuters reported. Sprint ended its previous quarter with 54.6 million subscribers.

Meantime, Sprint continues to upgrade its network to prevent dropped calls – and stem subsequent customer frustration – and expand its 4G LTE coverage. The company says its LTE network now covers about 254 million people. Reports say Sprint lost many of its customers to T-Mobile, the No. 4 mobile operator it is expected to buy.

Sprint now reports on a fiscal-year basis. July 30 marked its first-quarter fiscal year 2014 numbers.