Sprint scores almost a million new connections in Q3, but the growth comes at a cost

February 6, 2015

Following its preliminary publication, Sprint has today shared its final report for Q3 2014. The US carrier managed to bag just short of one million new connections, boasting "significant progress on building a consistent and reliable network". It's not all good news, however. As the recent Super Bowl ad teaser revealed, the company hopes you're watching.

First, the good stuff. The report shows the total new connections up 42 percent year-on-year, adding 30,000 postpaid, 410,000 prepaid and 527,000 wholesale (via Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile brands) customers in the quarter alone. The postpaid gross additions is the highest in three years and 4G LTE coverage has reached over 270 million customers. Now for the bad.

The new additions came at a cost. Sprint reported an operating loss of $2.5 billion (including non-cash charges of $2.1 billion; EBITDA of $1.04 billion), compared to an operating loss of $576 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenue also took a serious blow, falling 1.8 percent to $8.97 billion. Also, while the company sure added new connections, there were also account holders who opted to emigrate. All 205,000 of them.

While its aggressive marketing clearly appears to be attracting new customers, the company's earnings are starting to feel the marketing strain. Check out the full report on Sprint's website if you're interested to read through results in full.

Source: Sprint