We’re coming into earnings season again, the bane of business reporters and a source of trending evidence for the rest of us. For the third quarter, Sprint Nextel Corp.(S) faces another dismal earnings report, but AT&T Inc.(T) should stay even and Verizon Wireless might even have sunny news to report, according to analysts.
Sprint, No. 3 in the wireless operator market for the United States, will continue to see churn, quite simply, according to analysts Cowen & Co. and Gartner Inc. No mention of the word “hemorrhage,” however, so perhaps it could be worse. Sprint is shopping its iDen network and is trying to close the deal with Clearwire Corp. to form a joint venture for WiMAX — two things that will help the carrier right its financial ship.
AT&T, according to Cowen & Co., will suffer from paying higher handset subsidies on the iPhone, a bottom-line-eating result of slashing the gadget’s retail price by half with the new 3G release. Nonetheless, AT&T still will yield a dividend, analysts say.
Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, will add customers and show off high wireless margins. Nonetheless, it likely will not be enough to nab the No. 1 spot from AT&T.
But the third quarter is the third quarter. Industry eyes will be watching what happens in Q4, which will reflect new realities in the industry — among them, the historic meltdown of the banking system, an invasion of touchscreens, mergers (Alltel-VzW, notably) and new application-centric business models.
