Analysts cautious: Although the company managed to eke out a quarterly profit, some analysts cautioned that some of the gains were due to accounting changes. As for the company's customer base, churn of existing subscribers was higher than a year ago and it posted only a modest gain of 88,000 postpaid phone customers.
"Sprint's financial position remains challenged as its balance sheet is highly leveraged and the company currently holds over $34 billion in long-term debt," Technology Business Research analyst Steve Vachon said in a research note.
Merger talk: Much of the questioning on a conference call with reporters centered around Sprint's talks with Charter, T-Mobile and others about a potential merger. Charter recently indicated it's not interested in a deal, but other possibilities remain.
"We have plenty of options, and we've had discussions with a lot of different parties," Claure said, according to Reuters. An update on the fruits of those discussions "should be coming in the near future."
