Sprint reported a net loss of USD 2.17 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter to March, hurt by an impairment charge of USD 2 billion to write down assets. That compares to a small profit of USD 69 million in the year-earlier period. Revenues rose 4.4 percent to USD 8.44 billion, led by higher equipment sales, and adjusted EBITDA was up 13.3 percent to USD 3.14 billion, thanks to cost reductions and a positive effect from the new lease accounting standards.
Sprint started losing customers again in Q4, with a net decline of 8,000 to 54.487 million. Growth in data devices was offset by the loss of 189,000 postpaid phone customers, 30,000 fewer prepaid users and 147,000 less wholesale connections. Postpaid phone ARPU managed a small sequential improvement to USD 50.18, but all other ARPUs were lower both quarterly and annually. Total service revenues fell 3.6 percent year-on-year to USD 5.66 billion.
The operator said it met all its targets for the year, and service revenue stabilised over the full year if the new accounting standards are excluded from the comparison. Total postpaid net additions increased by 286,000 year-on-year to 710,000 in the 12 months, driven largely by data devices offsetting phone losses.
Sprint also achieved USD 1.2 billion in gross cost savings last year, excluding the USD 350 million in costs related to its planned merger with T-Mobile and the accounting effect. The net savings were just USD 330 million, as much of the cost reduction was put back into network investments and other operational initiatives. Sprint said it will continue to look for cost savings in 2019, but these will be fully offset by incremental costs associated with network and customer experience initiatives.
CEO Michel Combes said the company had made progress, but "there are certainly continued challenges to address, which will continue to put pressure on our service revenue and retail customer growth."
Adjusted free cash flow was a negative USD 539 million in Q4 and an outflow of USD 914 million in the full year. This follows a sharp increase in capex to USD 4.96 billion from USD 3.32 billion in the previous year.
