For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – February 11, 2010 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Sprint Nextel (S), Palm (PALM), Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T) and Dean Foods (DF).
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Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:
Sprint Misses, but Losses Slow
Sprint Nextel (S) reported fourth-quarter 2009 results with a net loss per share of 34 cents, wider than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 18 cents. The third-largest U.S. wireless carrier posted a net loss of $980 million, 40% lower than the net loss of $1,621 million (57 cents per share) reported a year ago.
Net loss for full-year 2009 was $2.44 billion or 84 cents per share, also worse than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 66 cents.
Sprint’s shares were down 34 cents (or 9.32%) to $3.31 in morning trading Wednesday. The market appears to be discounting the lower subscriber losses in the quarter and focusing instead on the lower-than-expected sales number.
Sprint is well positioned to leverage the growing wireless smartphone market in the U.S., leveraging a rich portfolio of popular smartphone offerings. In response to the increased competition from iPhones, the company launched Palm’s (PALM) Pre and Pixi smartphones in 2009. Sprint further broadened its next-generation handset portfolio by launching smartphones based on the Android platform.
However, Sprint continues to lose market share to its larger peers Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) as they continue expanding their respective customer bases at a brisk rate. AT&T and Verizon posted robust subscriber growth of 2.7 million and 2.2 million in the fourth quarter, respectively. Sprint is struggling to integrate Nextel’s iDEN wireless network, resulting in subscribers losses to other carriers.
Dean Foods Posts Modest Results
Dean Foods (DF) reported fourth-quarter results with adjusted earnings per share of 31 cents per share, which was below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 38 cents. Earnings were also down 32.6% year-over-year.
Quarterly net sales declined 3.2% year-over-year to $3.0 billion as the company passed on lower dairy commodity costs to consumers in the form of lower prices. This was partially offset by acquisition-related growth at Fresh Dairy-Direct and WhiteWave Morningstar.
Net sales in the Fresh Dairy Direct segment declined 8.3% to $2.2 billion as the company passed some of the lower dairy commodity costs to customers, partially offset by continued volume growth. Raw milk prices were 19% lower compared to the prior-year.
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