UPDATE Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure believes the company would be a strong merger partner with another carrier or cable firm. He told a financial conference last week: “I guess people will always look at the potential to create that third carrier. The new administration, I have no idea how they’re going to look at it.”
Sprint is not conducting any deal talks now; Claure said Sprint will need to wait until the FCC’s incentive spectrum auction ends to hold such negotiations with companies like T-Mobile, which is at the center of much M&A speculation in the telecom market, reports Investopedia.
Sprint parent Softbank tried to merge Sprint with T-Mobile but regulators blocked that effort. With Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son pledging to invest $50 billion in the U.S. technology sector and saying he will create 50,000 U.S.-based jobs, there’s speculation that the Trump administration would be more open to a deal. “At this point in time, we’re going to [wait to] see what happens until the spectrum auction finishes, and then we’ll see the different levels of interest, which I assume there will be plenty.”
However it’s not clear T-Mobile wants to merge with Sprint since T-Mobile is in a much stronger place now than when Son last tried to pull off a merger. Sprint has also racked up a lot of debt, which may not make a deal as attractive, according to the account.
Reader Interactions