Sprint Nextel Corp.’s plummeting stock price and the expected exodus of millions of subscribers this year have yielded a fresh round of speculation about the company’s future.
But analysts disagree whether the nation’s third-largest wireless carrier is ripe for a takeover, is likely to begin selling parts of its operation to generate cash and make itself more agile, or will soldier on as-is.
“Any time you have a stock that’s down as much as this one is and with management departures and things like that, people start speculating on all kinds of things that the company may or may not do to improve things,” said Todd Rethemeier, an analyst with Soleil Securities.
So far neither Sprint nor its prospective suitors will comment on the rumors.
In the meantime, investors seem skeptical of a turnaround: Sprint’s shares have lost more than half their value since the beginning of January. They lost 23 cents to close at $5.99 Thursday.
Sprint, based in Overland Park, Kan., has struggled since acquiring Nextel Communications Inc. in August 2005. Two weeks ago, it announced it had lost 683,000 wireless subscribers with annual contracts and expected to lose another 1.2 million in the current quarter and a similar amount in the second quarter of 2008.
A Merrill Lynch analyst speculated this month that Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of No. 4 wireless company T-Mobile, might consider buying Sprint to bulk up and prevent an escalation of flat-rate pricing in the industry.
But the two carriers’ technologies are incompatible, a challenge Sprint has already seen enough of in the merger with Nextel.
The Wall Street Journal has surmised that Mexico’s Carlos Slim, who operates the dominant wireline and wireless networks in that country, might see Sprint as a way to get into the U.S. wireless market.
“We do note that it still has compelling assets that could…