Sprint PCS added over one million net customers in Q4, consisting of 390,000 net direct customer additions combined with 640,000 new customers from its wholesale and affiliate partners. As of the end of the year, Sprint PCS was serving a total of 20.4 million customers, an increase of more than 2.6 million, or 15%, from a year ago.
Driven by the wireless growth and other key metrics, Sprint reported Q4 operating revenues of $6.681 billion, up 2% compared to a year earlier. Net income for the fourth quarter was $38 million versus net income of $39 million for the same period last year. At year-end 2003, Sprint's cash on hand was $2.4 billion. Net debt was cut by $392 million and now stands at $16.7 billion.
Some additional highlights from the quarterly report:
- Sprint's Local Division surpassed 300,000 DSL subscribers as of 31-Dec-2003
- At the end of Q4, 66% of Sprint's local consumer customers have one or more services, such as long-distance, DSL, Sprint PCS wireless service or a premium package of vertical services.
- During Q4, Sprint's Local Division successfully converted 20 additional switch complexes to packet technology and had converted a total of nearly 130,000 lines by the end of the year.
- Total business revenues, including wholesale and affiliates, declined 3% from the year-ago period, but were up 1% sequentially. Consumer revenues were down 19% from the year ago period, and declined 7% sequentially.
- Revenue declines in consumer long-distance are beginning to be partially mitigated by growing competitive local service revenues from Sprint Complete Sense. This revenue source surpassed $100 million for the year.
- In Q4, total voice revenues decreased 8% compared to the year-ago period and 2% sequentially.
- Data revenues increased 2% from the year-ago period but declined 1% sequentially. Compared to the year ago period, growth in Frame Relay, private line and managed network services was partially offset by lower ATM revenues. IP revenues declined 3% compared to Q4 2002.
- During Q4, Sprint PCS experienced strong demand for data services, adding nearly 600,000 net new and existing customers for its PCS Vision services. At the end of the period, more than 3.2 million customers were subscribing to PCS Vision and more than 2.2 million customers subscribed to the company's first generation data services. Combined, more than a third of the direct customer base are now subscribing to data services. For the full quarter, data contributed nearly 5% to overall ARPU.
- During Q4, Sprint PCS made substantial progress in deploying network capacity and enhancing network quality. Capital spending in the quarter was $939 million, bringing the full-year investment to $2.15 billion.
- Sprint PCS added approximately 1,800 cell sites in 2003.
