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Last updated: Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sprint Nextel Corp., the nation’s third-largest wireless provider, on Wednesday said its loss widened in the second quarter as revenue and subscribers continued to decline. Its shares skidded 10 percent in morning trading. Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse said he was encouraged that the overall loss of subscribers slowed and the number of prepaid customers continued to rise, but acknowledged, “we are not satisfied that we lost a quarter of a million customers in the quarter.” The Overland Park, Kan.-based company reported a loss of $384 million, or 13 cents per share, in the three months ended June 30. That’s larger than its loss of $344 million, or 12 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue fell 10 percent to $8.14 billion from $9.06 billion a year ago. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a loss of 2 cents per share on lower revenue of $8.12 billion. Analysts typically exclude one-time items from their earnings estimates. The company didn’t report an adjusted earnings figure that excludes one-time items. Sprint shares fell 52 cents, or 11.3 percent, to $4.07 in morning trading Wednesday. They are still about midway within their 52-week range of $1.35 to $9.57. Wireless revenues fell 9 percent to $7 billion as the company shed another 257,000 subscribers during the quarter, a small increase from the 182,000 lost in the first quarter. The losses included 991,000 valuable customers who sign annual contracts, which was an improvement from the 1.25 million lost in the previous quarter but worse than the 780,000 shed a year ago. By comparison, Verizon Wireless picked up a net of 1.1 million subscribers during the second quarter while AT&T Inc. added 1.37 million. Making up some of the difference for Sprint were net gains of 938,000 prepaid customers on its iDEN network. Most of the iDEN increase came from Sprint’s Boost Mobile prepaid subsidiary,…

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Sprint Nextel Posts Wider 2Q Loss, Shares Skid

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