Sprint to the beneficiary in the fourth quarter, Michel Combes promoted to general manager

(Reuters) – Sprint, the american operator of mobile telephony, which has just announced a project of marriage with T-Mobile US (NASDAQ:TMUS) reported Wednesday a profit for the past quarter and announced the appointment of its chief financial officer Michel Combes to the post of director-general.

The French, former ceo of Alcatel-Lucent (PA:ALUA) and Altice (AS:TCAA), will take up his new functions on may 31, in replacement of Marcelo Claure, who will become executive chairman of Sprint and will have also responsibilities with Softbank (T:9984), the majority shareholder of Sprint.

Michel Combes and Marcelo Claure will work together to implement the announced merger with T-Mobile, said Sprint.

The number four on the american market of mobile telephony was said to have earned 39.000 subscribers in January-march, fourth quarter of its non-calendar fiscal year, compared to a loss of 118.000 public customers a year earlier.

The group reported a net profit of $ 69 million (58 million euros), or two cents per share, for the three months compared to a loss of $ 283 million (7 cents/share) a year earlier.

Analysts were expecting on average a loss per share of 7 cents, according to the consensus Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The turnover has declined to 8,09 billion dollars against 8,54 billion a year earlier.

Action Sprint won less than 1% 5.21 dollars in the trade after the stock Exchange on Wall Street.

Sprint and T-Mobile, subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom (DE:DTEGn), have announced Sunday a merger, for an amount of 26 billion dollars that will be paid in shares by T-Mobile, the two groups, hoping to better prepare for the transition to new generation networks.

Sprint said Wednesday have started the search for a new chief financial officer.

(Vibhuti Sharma to Bangaore and Sheila Dang in New York, Véronique Tison for the French service)