Sprint Corporation (NYSE: S) late yesterday afternoon reported results for the fiscal year 2018 fourth quarter and full year, including a stabilization of wireless service revenue and continued growth in postpaid net additions. The company reported a net loss of $1.9 billion and operating income of $398 million, both of which included a preliminary non-cash charge of $2 billion, along with adjusted EBITDA of $12.8 billion in fiscal year 2018.
“Sprint delivered on its plan for fiscal 2018, as we met all of our financial guidance for the year,” said Sprint CEO Michel Combes.
“While we’ve made progress, there are certainly continued challenges to address, which will continue to put pressure on our service revenue and retail customer growth.”
Sprint announced it made continued progress in the quarter on executing its Next-Gen Network plan. It now has 2.5 GHz spectrum deployed on approximately 80 percent of its macro sites. Sprint currently has approximately 30,000 outdoor small cells deployed including both mini macros and strand mounts. Sprint has deployed approximately 1,500 Massive MIMO radios, which increase the speed and capacity of the LTE network and, with a software upgrade, will provide mobile 5G service in select cities in the coming weeks.
Standards-based 5G is currently on-air in select locations, with commercial service expected to launch in the coming weeks. Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Kansas City are expected to be among the first cities to offer commercial 5G service; with Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington D.C. slated to launch by the end of June. The total initial 5G coverage footprint across all nine cities is expected to be more than 1,000 square miles. The company also announced standards-based 5G devices from LG, HTC, and Samsung that will be available soon.
May 8, 2019
Reader Interactions