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Analysts Are Worried About Sprint's Upcoming Earnings Report

It’s the middle of earnings season, for the final three months of 2017, and there have been some incredible numbers in the telecommunications sector from AT&T and Verizon already (T-Mobile has announced preliminary numbers, but the final numbers won’t be announced until February 8th). And this has analysts worried about the kind of numbers Sprint will put up during its earnings call tomorrow, February 2nd. Given Sprint’s track record, analysts are right to be worried.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank Market Research stated that “Sprint’s postpaid phone net adds could disappoint.” Adding that “AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have each reported postpaid phone net adds that far exceeded street expectations.” Analysts at MoffettNathanson have echoed what Deutsche Bank Market Research analysts stated as well. But on the bright side, Deutsche Bank Market Research believes that postpaid net adds for the quarter are up 37% year-over-year (and up 23% compared to Q2 2017 and 18% compared to Q3 2017). Which means that the market is getting healthier and not really plateauing as everyone once thought. Now just because the other three carriers posted positive net adds in the quarter, doesn’t mean that Sprint will post negative. It’s quite possible that Sprint could be in the positive as well, since these net adds are not just smartphones, but devices in general.

Sprint is slated to do its earnings report tomorrow morning, before the market opens (so around 7 or 8AM ET). That is when everyone will find out how well Sprint did. While the big topic with wireless carriers is always its net adds, another topic for Sprint is going to be its spending. Since Marcelo Claure took over the company, it has been looking to shed spending where it can, and has already saved a ton of money, which resulted in the company actually making a profit in the past two quarters. So the real question here will be if Sprint can continue that momentum. Sprint will also give guidance for the rest of 2018, as to what it expects to do in terms of adding customers, and bringing in more revenue. Both of which are metrics that investors are going to be keen to take a look at.