Ouch!
Wells Fargo analysts recently heralded the “many tools” Sprint has in its toolbox following the carrier’s recent technology reveal in NYC, but it seems BTIG isn’t buying it – or at least, the latter doesn’t believe it will translate into added subscribers in the coming quarters.
In a Wednesday note, BTIG’s Walter Piecyk slashed the firm’s estimates for Sprint’s net addition figures in the calendar fourth quarter and first quarter 2017. Piecyk said the firm cut its postpaid phone net addition prediction by a whopping 40 percent from 638,000 to just 372,000 and boosted its churn estimate from 1.45 percent to 1.53 percent for the period.
According to Piecyk, BTIG made the change due to an expected strong quarter from T-Mobile and a bump for Verizon on the back of the Pixel smartphone.
The firm also cropped its first calendar quarter estimate down to 102,000 from 166,000, with Piecyk noting the carrier will face a “stiffer headwind” in coming quarters as it moves to transition customers off its half-off rate plan when the promotional pricing expires.
If BTIG’s predictions play out, it will mark a stall in postpaid growth for the comeback carrier, which pulled in 173,000 postpaid phone net additions in the second quarter and 347,000 postpaid phone net additions in the third quarter.
While Sprint has been building postpaid momentum, its prepaid offerings have suffered and the carrier lost 427,000 prepaid net additions in the third quarter. However, Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati recently noted the carrier is planning a prepaid comeback to address this fault, which seems to be a good plan that is increasingly valuing pre- and postpaid additions as two parts of the same whole rather than two different metrics.
