Sprint shares rise as earnings date change calms investors

Shares in Sprint climbed the most in five months Friday after the company moved up the date it will report earnings, calming investor concerns about its turnaround.

The Overland Park-based wireless carrier has scheduled its earnings release for Tuesday, a week earlier than originally planned. The report is expected to show that Sprint closed 2015 with its first full year of subscriber gains in eight years, analysts said.

Sprint shares on Friday rose nearly 15 percent, or 37 cents, to $2.87. The stock had lost 31 percent this year through Thursday.

“Sprint is slowly improving; possibly not quickly enough to get out of the way of the balance sheet but we don’t see any near-term liquidity issues,” Phil Cusick, an analyst with JPMorgan Chase & Co., wrote in a note Friday.

While Sprint has added subscribers in the past few quarters using promotions, it has also burned through about half its cash and other more-liquid cash equivalents.

The company had about $2 billion in cash and short-term investments on its books at the end of September, which is about equal to the debt maturing it has to refinance in 2016, a year that so far has been tough for bond issuers.

The carrier is aiming to cut $2 billion to $2.5 billion in costs, though analysts have expressed skepticism that the plan will work.

Morgan Stanley credit analyst David Hamburger in a note Wednesday said Sprint has no clear path to a turnaround that could lead to realizing the full value of its bonds or to recover that value in a restructuring or bankruptcy.

“We want to hear from them — because the story is not that bad,” said Jennifer Fritzsche, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities LLC, in a note Thursday.

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 10:07 AM with the headline "Sprint shares rise as earnings date change calms investors."