Mr.Nuke

That isn't how it works when a single entity owns/controls 84.7% of the company.

Lets be clear the guidance is $5 to $6 billion per year over the next 3 years. That would breakdown to $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion per quarter, but I wouldn't be looking at it at that micro of a level. The fact that $1.1 is close enough to $1.2 though right now tells us guidance is holding fairly well right now. We'll revaluate that next quarter when we're half way through the year. No this is Sprint following its CapEx plans and assuming it may have to continue operating on its own if a merger fails to go through. The merger documents and terms are public. This was not part of it. Given new T-Mobile would be decommissioning 35,000 sites with most of them predominately being Sprint sites, it would actually be the exact opposite. If you were T-Mobile management in an ideal world you could tell Sprint where to dictate their $5 to $6 billion in spending i.e. keep sites. If not you'd probably prefer them not to be spending a bunch of money on equipment that you at the very least are going to end up having to pay to move and at the most that your going to throw away. You'd rather have Sprint target that $5 to $6 billion on debt reduction or ideally have it sitting there in cash for when you take over and can spend it right away as you see fit. Or we could all just realize the context of the comments and the FCC document they were made in. Sprint had no problem borrowing the $5 to $6 billion for this year. As long as lenders are willing to continue to lend them money at decent terms, as a company they're fine. Near term they're in ok shape. Longer term that becomes a bit more problematic.

They did so last quarter??? And we've seen ample anecdotal evidence that they're spending in user tracked markets here.

No I'm talking about a very specific part of a specific state, which neither carrier currently natively serves. Please take a second and go back and read the post, because the last words you left off are very important. " If the merger goes through, that will switch over to T-Mobile's roaming deal with Viaero." Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with Sprint and T-Mobile's separate roaming deal, which almost certainly covers only T-Mobile native coverage.

Which has nothing to do what I said at all...

Pretty much the entire Nebraska panhandle is verizon roaming. If the merger goes through, that will switch over to T-Mobile's roaming deal with Viaero.

I haven't ready his testimony and probably won't have a chance to until late tonight or tomorrow, but much like the FCC document, why is this a surprise? Part of the sell job to the regulators and anyone like congress that could potentially step in the way of this is that Sprint (and T-Mobile makes the same argument themselves in their portion of the FCC filing as well) are in precarious position going forward with significant competitive disadvantages to AT&T and Verizon. Selling this, and specifically selling this angle is why Claure is no longer the CEO and why Combes and the rest of the executive team is on a cross country roadshow telling employees the exact opposite of what Claure is telling the regulators. It is all part of the dance.

Quite the premise for an article based on a document that is doing everything it can to sell the FCC idea on the notion that the two companies need to merge to survive... Yeah if you want to view an earnings release or earnings call as Sprint putting on a positivity show, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong. But if that is your position, then you also need to realize the FCC document is just as far if not further in the opposite direction to do everything they can to get the merger through. The truth is somewhere in the middle between the two.

It would be a lot more juicy without the redactions. Great.

Presumably this marks the departure of the free year BYOD plan as there isn't a compelling reason to have both.

Why? They're significantly cheaper than deploying 8T8Rs. So if you have say $10 million to spend in an area in a given year what gets you more bang for your buck 550 8T8Rs or 1650 mini-macro sites?

Yeah I used that presentation and the analyst call as the source for the front page article here.

Still vague on the details, but it will be curious to see how they go at this assuming the merger is approved. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-hopes-for-sprint-merger-approval-as-soon-as-next-month

I would try one more time leaving it say overnight in what you think is the optimal position.

How long were you letting this process play out?

I did on that too in the same post ? Yeah with merger approval prospects 50/50 at best each company needs to continue operating as if the merger isn't going to go through to an extent. An analyst tried to address the following on the call, but Marcelo didn't really give a great answer and it didn't come up on T-Mobile's earnings call at all... The question to ask Neville Ray or John Legere and even to an extent Marcelo, Combes, and Saw is ok you guys have indentified approximately 35,000 sites between the two networks that would be decommissioned under a merger, how solid is that estimate? Have you actually started to go through and identify specific sites or are we just talking general estimates right now? Because if they've reached the specific site stage (and it is possible that they have especially on T-Mobile's side as part of their due diligence) does Sprint have T-Mobile's list? With T-Mobile spending $4.9 to $5.3 billion and Sprint spending $5 to $6 billion this year, ideally (again especially of you are T-Mobile) you'd find a way to have that money spent intelligently.

Quarter versus annual.

Perhaps, but it probably isn't much. Historically they've said it accounts for <1% of new adds. Additionally increased operating Income, and positive net income for the first time in 11 years would point towards it not being a significant impact.

http://s21.q4cdn.com/487940486/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2017/q4/Fiscal-4Q17-Earnings-Release-FINAL.pdf Final 2017 Capex was $3.3 billion narrowly missing the $3.5-$4 billion guidance. FY 2018 Capex guidance remains $5-6 billion Marcelo Claure is out as CEO, being transitioned to "Executive Chairman." Michel Combes as the new CEO. Claure will also be COO of SoftBank and CEO of SoftBank International. http://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-elevates-marcelo-claure-to-executive-chairman-and-appoints-michel-combes-as-ceo.htm

No one other than Verizon or AT&T is in a position to merge/buyout with Sprint or T-Mobile, and no # 1or 2 carrier combining with a 3 or 4 was ever going to get regulatory approval.

T-Mobile's earnings are being released after the closing bell today. Sprint's earnings release is tomorrow. The companies will continue seperate earnings releases this year as they are still operating "independently."

Seth GoodwinSprint 4G Rollout UpdatesMonday, April 30, 2018 - 5:00 PM PDT After three previous attempts during the past four years, something many thought may never happen actually did. On Sunday April 29, T-Mobile announced they were effectively acquiring Sprint in an all stock deal, combining the third and fourth largest carriers in the U.S. wireless market. Pending regulatory approval, the merger is targeted for closing in the first half of 2019. The Deal The deal using an exchange ratio of 0.10256 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share valued Sprint at approximately $26.5 billion (plus the assumption of Sprint’s $30+ billion in debt) or $6.62 per share using T-Mobile’s Friday closing price of $64.52. The combined company “New T-Mobile” will be owned 41.7% by Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent company. 27.4% of the company will be owned by Sprint's parent company SoftBank, with the remaining 30.9% owned by the general public and institutional investors. According to terms of the deal announced by both companies in a joint press release, the combined T-Mobile will retain two headquarters in Bellevue, Washington and Overland Park, Kansas. Current T-Mobile CEO John Legere will retain that role at the new company. T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert will serve as President and COO. No Sprint executives were announced to the management team at this time. Deutsche Telekom's Timotheus Höttges will serve as chairman of the company's board of directors, and DT will have 9 seats on the board compared to SoftBank's 4. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, and SoftBank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son will occupy two of SoftBank’s seats. As opposed to the famous T-Mobile/AT&T attempted tie up several years ago, this deal does not include a breakup fee should the merger fail to pass regulatory approval. Rather, Sprint has independently signed a roaming agreement with T-Mobile for four years that will continue regardless of the outcome of the merger. On the analyst call for the merger announcement Marcelo Claure said this would take effect immediately. As of the time this article was published, specific details pertaining to the roaming agreement and any actual known roaming connections have yet to materialize. The Plan Sprint and T-Mobile will continue operating separately until the conclusion of the merger, something that in and of itself raises multiple questions about this coming year. Hopefully we'll gain some more insights with Sprint's upcoming FY 2017/4th quarter earnings call. Assuming approval, the companies announced that they intend on spending up to $40 billion in the first three years on capital expenditures and consolidating operations into a single entity. According to the press release, this represents almost 50% more than what Sprint and T-Mobile combined had spent over the past three years. At the time of closing, the companies estimate that Sprint and T-Mobile will have approximately 110,000 macro cell towers. Of these, around 35,000 will be decommissioned due to co-location or other redundancies. 10,000 new sites will be added leaving New T-Mobile with approximately 85,000 macro sites. Within the first three years of a combined company it is also estimated that the carrier will have over 50,000 small cells independent of magic boxes. The two carriers currently have around 10,000 combined. The stated plan is to “use T-Mobile as the anchor network” and use selected Sprint “keep” sites to add coverage and density. At a minimum, Sprint’s BRS/EBS 2.5 GHz spectrum will be added to T-Mobile’s sites and T-Mobile’s “full spectrum portfolio” will be deployed on Sprint’s “keep” sites. At face value, this would point toward mainly decommissioning Sprint sites as part of the 35,000-macro site reduction. In actuality we'll see what they do. For example all things equal, if two sites are co-located the greater synergies are in eliminating the tower rack with less favorable lease terms or worse rack location. VoLTE and Two-dot-Five The conference call noted while the goal is to migrate Sprint's CDMA customers to VoLTE as soon as possible, with 20 million Sprint customers having T-Mobile compatible handsets on day one. The intention is to have the total migration to T-Mobile completed over a three-year period without “degrading experience on Sprint’s network.” This suggests at a minimum keeping Sprint’s 1x800 voice service active during the transition as well as a deliberate coordinated process for overall decommissioning of macro sites. The other thing to watch going forward in this area is that T-Mobile makes no mention in their investor presentation toward utilizing anything other than Sprint’s 2.5 spectrum on their sites. A Sprint T-Mobile merger would create a spectrum behemoth with holdings ranging from T-Mobile’s low band 600 MHz for building penetration and rural coverage all the way through Sprint’s 2.5 GHz for capacity and speed. On Sunday, executives announced they have no intention of divesting any spectrum. However, questions remain on issues like what does a company that already possesses 600 MHz and 700 MHz LTE spectrum do with 800 MHz? How do T-Mobile and Sprint independently spend CapEx this year without diminishing merger synergies? We at S4GRU plan on potentially analyzing a combined company’s significant aggregate spectrum situation in a separate article at a later date. According to the investor information provided, the combined company is estimated to have run rate cost synergies in excess of $6 billion annually or on a net present value basis in excess of $43 billion. $26 billion NPV or $4 billion annually of these annual savings would be derived from network consolidation and CapEx synergies. Additional savings could come from consolidation of operations including store closing and eliminating corporate redundancies. From Sprint’s perspective these savings would be significant. The carrier has not turned a profit in the past 10 years. However, with these savings (even a portion of these savings) the carrier hypothetically would have been profitable all 10 years. Regulatory Hurdles This merger is not a done deal by any means. It faces regulatory scrutiny from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Under the administration of former President Barack Obama, AT&T and T-Mobile attempted to merge only to be shot down by the government. Sprint and T-Mobile were reportedly told not to even try four years ago. The prior administration's thinking had constantly been that by allowing any combination of the big 4 U.S. wireless carriers to merge into three, consolidation would negatively impact the average consumer due to lower competition in the market. On the conference call Marcelo Claure noted that regulatory approval is “the elephant in the room.” Claure and Legere are expected to embark on a tour of Washington D.C. to try and gain favor for the merger later this week. Much has changed in Washington since Sprint and T-Mobile’s last attempt at a tie-up, but whether or not a merger is anywhere close to a guarantee to pass remains in limbo. President Donald Trump has positioned himself as a pro-business President, meeting with Masa Son shortly after his election. And while Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai has made comments signaling he may be more open to market consolidation than his predecessors; President Trump’s DOJ is simultaneously attempting to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. Claure and Legere noted that they had talked to Pai, but had yet to talk to anyone at the DOJ prior to announcing the merger. The Sell With nothing guaranteed, selling this merger to the government and the public is going to be the key factor on whether or not it ultimately gets approved. Sprint and T-Mobile executives wasted no time in starting on Sunday launching the pro merger site allfor5g.com. Legere and Claure continued touting the merger in a series of interviews and television appearances Sunday night and Monday morning. Based on early results, the argument for the merger is fairly crafted towards its intended audience. The crux of T-Mobile and Sprint’s contention is that 5G is the future, and the future is costly. Both companies maintain a 3rd stronger carrier is better than 4 carriers in a market, two of which are at a capital disadvantage. Claure noted that, “It’s a very simple rule of business---both companies need each other.” Sprint has 2.5 GHz spectrum that will be optimal for 5G but lacks the financial resources to deploy its own. A new T-Mobile benefits from the 2.5 GHz spectrum, a larger combined customer base, financial synergies, and greater economies of scale to effectively deploy 5G. Legere noted their goal to eventually be able to provide 450 Mbit/s speeds consistently everywhere. The 5G argument is significant for a couple of reasons. The first is the current administration has made 5G a quasi-national security issue. The merger of Qualcomm and Broadcom was blocked partially on the grounds of China taking the lead in 5G, and it was widely reported at one point that the Trump administration was considering nationalizing 5G out of security concerns with China. The goal here is that if you let New T-Mobile happen they contend that they will be in a position to deliver 5G rapidly, creating a sense of urgency that a deal needs to be approved sooner than later. If you don’t let them combine they aren’t in the same position to make that happen. They also contended that 5G would allow for the innovators of the future, a not so thinly veiled overall economic development message. The other major 5G argument centers on rural expansion. For a long-time wireless rural cell service and rural broadband have been an important political and economic development issue. Historically rural service has lagged as the infrastructure cost to deliver service far exceeds any revenue operators can hope to recoup. Legere and Claure have immediately been pushing the notion that a merger would allow the combined carrier to bring rural broadband across the nation (as well as creating jobs in rural areas during the network deployment). Lastly, their final argument centers around job creation. Typically, one of the reasons companies merge is that you can save money by eliminating duplicate positions within two separate organizations. Legere on Sunday claimed that this merger would create “thousands of American jobs” with 200,000 people working either directly for or on behalf of a combined entity. This likely faces more regulatory scrutiny than some of the other pro-merger arguments, as again typically mergers result in overall contraction. Furthermore, Sprint on its own announced several hundred layoffs within the past few months. Why now? In the near term, the FCC at some point soon is going to impose a quiet period forbidding anyone that is participating in this fall’s spectrum auction (an auction Sprint and T-Mobile are seeking a waiver for to jointly coordinate bidding strategies) from discussing mergers. Additionally, the longer the wait is, it is likely some of the merger synergies would be eliminated. Sprint towers that are redundant to T-Mobile are not to Sprint itself. If Sprint's executive team was to be believed, Sprint was poised to spend $5 to 6 billion on Capex each of the next three years. Undoubtedly some of that, a potentially significant portion, would've been on towers T-Mobile has no interest in retaining. Slightly longer term, if there was ever a presidential administration to try this under it is this one. Much like this merger's outcome President Trump's re-election is far from a certainty. If a Democratic administration were to come back to Washington D.C. odds of any merger approval diminish significantly. Longer term yet, Sprint hasn’t turned a profit in 10 years. Marcelo Claure has done a more than admirable job at steering the ship during his four-year tenure: cutting costs, coming up with creative cost-effective network deployment strategies, etc. However, at some point access to traditional borrowing markets may have been cutoff due to Sprint's inability to generate a profit or even consistent free cash flows. It didn’t appear imminent given their two-time borrowing this year, but the company has over $27 billion in debt due over the next 6 years. It is pretty easy to envision a scenario where bond investors said times up. Beyond that, the simple burden of debt may have become so overwhelming that even if it didn't threaten the going concern of the company, it negatively impacted capital expenditures, something we've seen recently. Long-term is actually the story of the past 5+ years. Sprint has incredible spectrum assets, but it needed someone more financially able and willing to deploy them. SoftBank through either inability to act due to debt covenants with Japanese banks lending it money or through deliberate choice—in hindsight was never the savior it seemed. On paper, this merger should seemingly create a financially healthy company that finally is able to leverage Sprint's vast spectrum assets. However, as in the past, time will tell... Source: 5gforall- https://allfor5g.com/

There are certainly some interesting questions I can think of.

This one will be a little more like all of the other ones just to get something up on the wall. We'll start to delve deeper technically later when we 1) have more time and 2) know more. Everything on that end has been pretty vague so far.

We are working on ours (sorry for the delay).