Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel reported Q1 net operating revenues of $9.05 billion, down 11 percent from the $10.2 billion reported in the same quarter a year ago. The struggling carrier lost $344 million, or 12 cents a share, compared to a profit of $19 million, or 1 cents per share, year-on-year. Revenues missed analyst expectations which were forecast at $9.17 billion.

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Sprint’s wireless unit saw revenues drop to $7.7 billion, a 12.5 percent decline from $8.8 billion a year ago. But the carrier has managed to at least slow the number of customers leaving the network. While Sprint lost 901,000 subscribers, including 776,000 post-paid customers and 250,000 prepaid users, this was down from Q1’s numbers of 1.09 million, including 1.07 of the more valuable post-paid subscribers. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected Q2 post-paid losses of 906,000. Post-paid churn for the quarter was just under 2 percent, compared with 2.45 percent in Q1. Sprint noted this was the company’s best churn rate since its merger with Nextel. ARPU, meanwhile, came in at $56, stable compared to Q1’s ARPU of “just under $56”. But compared to a year ago, ARPU was down 7 percent.

CEO Dan Hesse noted: “Our company-wide retention efforts, which include Simply Everything plans, our Now Network campaign and the launch of the [Samsung] Instinct handset are proving to be effective retention tools, particularly for high-value customers, and this is beginning to have positive impacts on churn and ARPU.”

— Additional Highlights:

— Sprint now has a total of 51.9 million customers, compared with 54 million a year ago. This breaks down to 38.9 million post-paid subscribers, 4.2 million prepaid subscribers and 8.7 million wholesale and affiliate subscribers. 

— Data revenues contributed more than $12 to overall post-paid ARPU in the second quarter, with CDMA data ARPU driving growth. CDMA data ARPU was up nearly $1 from the first quarter, to more than $15, and now accounts for approximately 27 percent of total CDMA ARPU. Bundled data services—including those part of Simply Everything—helped boost the data ARPU, as did growth in data cards.

— Prepaid ARPU in the quarter was approximately $30 compared to $31 in the year-ago period and $29 in the first quarter of 2008. Sprint said its Boost Unlimited MVNO helped sequentially to increase the ARPU.

— Wireline revenues came in at $1.6 billion, slightly lower sequentially and year-over-year as legacy voice and data declines exceeded internet revenue growth. 
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