Telecom Lead America: Sprint Nextel’s Capex (Capital expenditure) in Q1 2013 has increased significantly to $1.38 billion from $783 million in Q1 2013.
Sprint Nextel’s Capex in Q4 2012 was $1.47 billion.
Sprint, announcing the financial result for Q1 2013, said it made significant progress on the Network Vision deployment in the quarter, exceeding 12,000 sites on air during the first quarter.
To date there are more than 13,500 sites on air compared to more than 8,000 reported on Feb. 7. The number of sites that are either ready for construction, already underway or completed has grown to more than 25,000.
As part of Network Vision, Sprint has launched 4G LTE in 88 cities, including Los Angeles, Boston and Charlotte, N.C. since the beginning of the year and expects that 4G LTE will be available in more than 170 additional cities in the coming months.
The company remains on track to shut down the Nextel platform at the end of the second quarter.
Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel reported marginal growth in Q1 revenue to $8.79 billion from $8.73 billion.
The company’s net loss in the first quarter was $643 million against net loss of $863 in Q1 2012.
It says Adjusted OIBDA of $1.5 billion was the highest in nearly four years even as Sprint made significant investments in the business during the quarter.
Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO, said: “Record Sprint platform service revenue and subscriber levels fueled our performance. We achieved significant Adjusted OIBDA growth while investing heavily to improve our network, expanding our 4G LTE footprint and offering customers the best smartphones with truly unlimited data plans.”
Operating income for the quarter was $29 million against loss of $255 million.
Sprint platform postpaid ARPU grew by more than $1 year-over-year.
86 percent of quarterly Sprint platform postpaid handset sales were smartphones, including more than 1.5 million iPhones sold during the quarter. 43 percent of iPhone sales were to new customers, a rate that continues to outperform larger competitors.
Forecast
The company expects 2013 Adjusted OIBDA to be at the high-end of the previous forecast of between $5.2 billion and $5.5 billion excluding the effects of the closing of strategic transactions.
