Sprint Rallies Strongly Despite Missing Earnings Expectations

Sprint

traded up over 16% in the pre-market session after the company reported earnings for the second-quarter. Sprint reported an EPS of $(0.46), worse than the the $(0.41) the Street had been expecting. Despite the miss, shares of the telecom giant traded up strongly on the company's guidance. In the following conference call, the company's CFO Joe Euteneuer said that 2012 EBITDA guidance will increase to $4.5-4.6 billion, up from $3.9 billion. Sprint said that the build out of its LTE platform is going well. Of the 12,000 sites Sprint plans to bring online this year, 2000 are currently up with Baltimore set to come online soon. Sprint also commented on its deal with Apple

, noting that it was ahead of its commitment to the tech company. Perhaps most importantly, Sprint reported ARPU of $63.38 and free cash flow of $209M. Sprint said the company's brand churn was at its lowest ever, near 1.6% when excluding Nextel. Shares of Sprint traded near $3.85 on Thursday morning.