Sprint CEO: 'We Are Back In The Game, We Are Taking Customers Away From Our Competitors'

Sprint Corp S reported its fourth-quarter 2014 earnings on Tuesday. Although the company reported an EPS loss of $0.06, it managed to reverse the trend of losing customers by increasing its prepaid customer base by 1.2 million in the quarter.

Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO, was on CNBC post the earnings release to weigh in on the numbers.

Back To Growth

“We had a very clear plan that we explained in the past and that goes the basics thing in our business, we got to make sure that we have, that we are getting customers to our network,” Claure said. “Sprint had a tradition of losing customers, so we are back in the game, we are taking customers away from our competitors.”

He continued, “This has been a remarkable quarter, not only in customer acquisition, but on customer retention. We pretty much brought in the lowest churning. I think we dropped 46 basis points. So, when you put all that together, the company is on the [wave] of growth.”

According to Claure in order to grow in the telecom industry, companies need to invest money and it costs money to attract new customers. He also mentioned that “we have a clear plan in terms of when does the company generate free cash flows and we have very clear plan in terms of how we are executing in all fronts.

Liquidity Concerns

Claure was asked that in the way the company is burning cash, is there a possibility that it can run out of cash by 2016. He replied, “We have right now [cash flow in or the …] is good. We have over $7 billion in liquidity, we have done a lot in this last couple of months since we raised $1.5 billion of debt.”

“We increased our […] line for installed billing and receivables by $2 billion to $3.3 billion and now we are in the midst of a getting into securitisation of our least receivable. So, we feel very good in terms of the [billability] of the liquidity that we have at this point in time,” Claure concluded confidently.