Sprint Loses Money, Subscribers in Q3

Sprint Nextel (S 3.22, -0.02) reported a wider-than-expected loss for its third quarter as the company continues to lose subscribers.

Sprint reported a loss of $0.17 per share, $0.02 worse than the First Call consensus that expected a loss of $0.15.

Revenues fell 8.8% year-over-year to $8.04 billion; the consensus expected $8.09 billion.

Sprint said it lost a total of 135,000 net retail subscribers in the quarter.  However, the company said that net post-paid subscriber losses have improved by approximately 20% in both the second and third quarters.

As for its forecast, Sprint said it continues to expect that both post-paid and total subscriber full-year losses should improve in 2009 as compared to 2008.  The company also expects both post-paid and total subscriber net losses to improve sequentially from 3Q to 4Q of 2009.