Who Knew?

Sprint: Collapsing In On Itself

Okay, so let’s just recap here:

  • July 24th: Sprint sells off most of its cellphone towers for $670 million.

  • Last month, Sprint posted a Q3 net loss of $326 million.

  • A company spokesman announces “draconian” layoffs, in addition to saying “nothing is off the table” and “every option will be scrutinized” to turn the carrier into a viable competitor with AT&T and Verizon.

  • Bob Brust, the CFO who started only last spring, is being incredibly public about the dire financial straits of the company:
    “As I found out, we made an art form out of presenting stuff to each other—all for internal presentations….To be a jerk, I pulled out all the printers out of the company. It’s now down to 2 million copies, but the message is why are we doing all these internal presentations to ourselves? We have to find those people and either get them working on something significant or get them out the door.”
    Brust has also stopped buying bottled water companywide and held off on ordering new office supplies.

  • To top it all off, Moody’s Investor Service recently downgraded Sprint’s credit rating to “junk” status.
What’s next for the company? For the next one or two years Sprint will focus mostly on just keeping their current customers from leaving: enhancing their customer support apparatus and launching an aggressive marketing campaign. They’re also launching a few Sprint 4G-branded phones under the network of their newly acquired Clearwire, and rumors abound of a possible Android device in Sprint’s future.
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