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Sprint Nextel Announces 33% Growth in Fourth-Quarter Profits

6:05 am on March 1, 2007 | Category: Business, Cell Phones, Corporate, Wireless

America’s third largest cell phone carrier, Sprint Nextel, reported a 33% increase in fourth-quarter profits yesterday, but admitted that it is still losing high-quality subscribers in many markets.

The company earned a total of $261 million, or $0.09 per share, in the final three months of 2006, compared to $195 million ($0.07/share) in the same period a year previous. Quarterly revenue was up 6% to $10.44 billion.

These results exceed the estimates of analysts, who predicted earnings of around $0.08 per share on revenue of $10.39 billion.

The company saw a net gain of 1.3 million customers in the fourth quarter, giving it a total of 53.1 million subscribers nationwide. Subscriber churn remained higher-than-average, however, resulting in a loss of 306,000 profitable postpaid customers, many of whom had subscribed to Nextel’s struggling Push-to-Talk network.

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