Sprint Call: CEO Dan Hesse: “It Will Take Some Time To Fully Resolve Our Challenges”
By Tricia Duryee - Wed 06 Aug 2008 09:05 AM PST
On Sprint’s (NYSE: S) conference call this morning, CEO Dan Hesse outlined some of the changes that are underway at the carrier that is decreasing churn and improving the company’s financial position. And, although progress was made in the second quarter, “we are far from satisfied...We are not in a position to deliver sustained revenue growth, but we believe we have a good plan in place, and are seeing traction and have clear goals and measurements and accountability throughout the organization.”
Other highlights:
-- Call centers: Sprint’s call centers have been a focus in the last year, and staffed up to manage increase in calls, and in 2008 have been more proactive, fix errors early in the lifecycle, which led to a significant reduction in calls to care because of the number of resolutions in the first call.
-- On WiMax: We’ll be launching commercial service in Baltimore soon, and the regulatory proceedings with the Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR) merger are on schedule and we expect to close by the end of the year.
More after the jump…
-- On new offerings: The Simply Everything plan is benefiting ARPU and data ARPU, and the Instinct broke sales records at both Sprint and Best Buy stores. The company is preparing to launch a femtocell for homes and small business, and is gearing up for a new NFL season, and offering specific team scores, news and highlights; recently launched a new Sprint Web, which is a customizable homepage, and provides the customer direct access to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) search.
-- On outlook: Hesse: “While I’m pleased with the pace of progress, it will take some time to fully resolve our challenges.” When looking at Q2, he said the sequential improvements in lowering churn is more than seasonality, but the beginning of some sustainable improvements.
-- On reducing churn vs. customer acquisition: Hesse said they are focused on reducing churn at the sacrifice of acquiring new customers. They’ve made a conscious decision to reduce the number of distribution locations and increase credit standards which makes it inherently difficult to attract new customers.
-- On private offering: Sprint Nextel also issued a press release today saying that it intends to offer $3 billion of cumulative perpetual convertible preferred stock in a private offering. The company declined to answer questions about the offering during the call.
Posted in: Companies, Operators, SprintNextel, Money, Earnings
Tags: dan hesse,
