Sprint's Stock Rallies After Revenue Beat, Net Phone Customer Additions

Sprint Corp.'s stock jumped 1.1% in premarket trade Monday, after the telecommunications company reported fiscal first-quarter revenue that beat expectations, with new postpaid phone customers added after losing them a year ago. For the quarter ended June 30, losses widened to $302 million, or 8 cents a share, from $20 million, or a penny a share, in the same period a year ago. The FactSet consensus was for a per-share loss of 8 cents. Revenue slipped to $8.01 billion from $8.03 billion, but was above the FactSet consensus of $7.99 billion. Postpaid phone net additions were 173,000, after a net loss of 12,000 a year ago, while postpaid phone churn improved to 1.39% from 1.49%. Wireless net additions were 377,000 vs. 675,000 a year ago. "We had another quarter of solid progress in our turnaround with the highest first quarter postpaid phone net additions in nine years, the lowest postpaid phone churn in company history, and finally being postpaid net port positive against all three national carriers after five years," said Chief Executive Marcelo Claure. The stock has run up 28% year to date through Friday, while the S&P 500 has gained 6.4%.