SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

In 2013, SoftBank took control of Sprint in a $21.6 billion acquisition [bloomberg.com]. Sprint was already in trouble, but Son announced his intention to merge the company with T-Mobile to challenge Verizon and AT&T. One of the first things he did was put Claure on Sprint’s board. When the plan to merge with T-Mobile ran into regulatory objections and failed, Son bought Claure’s company and named his protégé Sprint’s CEO.

In the 17 months since, Claure (pronounced CLAW-ray) and Son have had hundreds of phone chats, exchanged thousands of texts and e-mails, and sat through dozens of midnight meetings. They’ve slashed prices—Sprint offered iPhones for $1 a month last year—and replaced much of the old executive team. This week people familiar with the situation said the company would eliminate 2,500 jobs, bringing total cuts under SoftBank to more than 4,000.

It hasn’t helped much. The stocks of SoftBank and Sprint plummeted to multiyear lows in mid-January, though both recovered some with Sprint’s report of third-quarter subscriber gains and lower-than-expected losses. SoftBank has plowed more than $22 billion into Sprint, and yet all of Sprint is now valued at $11.8 billion. The company’s $2.2 billion in cash is about the same as its 2016 debt obligations.

A decade ago, Sprint had a $69 billion market value and a chance to dominate the U.S. wireless business. The company is now No. 4 in essentially a four-player business. It hasn’t posted an annual profit since 2006.

Original Submission