(By Balachander) Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) posted a quarterly loss of $1.3 billion amid an increase in operating expenses and revenue growth. Net revenue beat Wall Street projections.
Sprint Nextel reported losing a total of 337,000 wireless subscribers in the fourth quarter, versus addition of 1.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
The Overland Park, Kansas-based mobile service provider's loss per share widened to 44 cents from 43 cents in the year-ago quarter. Net loss was $1.3 billion, same as last year.
Wall Street analysts, on average, expected a loss of 46 cents per share.
Net operating revenue rose 3 percent to $9.00 billion, beating market expectations of a 2.30 percent growth for the quarter ended December.
Total net operating expenses increased 6 percent.
Wireless net additions plunged to 283,000 from 1.1 million.
Sprint platform added 401,000 net postpaid customers versus 539,000 in the year-ago quarter.
Total retail postpaid churn was 1.79 percent, compared with 1.75 percent in the same period of last year.
Sprint reported roughly 2.2 million iPhone sales in the fourth quarter. At the end of the fourth quarter, Sprint said it had sold more than 4 million 4G LTE smartphones.
Adjusted OIBDA margin shrank to 10.7 percent from 10.8 percent in the prior-year period.
The stock, which has been trading between $2.20 and $6.04 over the past year, closed previous session at $5.77.