Sprint Nextel Corp. reported a loss of $980 million or 34 cents per share for the fourth quarter of 2009. Though the company managed to cut the losses as it posted a loss of $1.62 billion or 57 cents per share in the same period last year, the results completely missed the expectations of the market readers as they were expecting the loss of only 19 cents per share.

The third largest wireless carrier of U. S. also fell in terms of revenue as it posted revenue of $7.87 billion in fourth quarter and analysts had projected $8.04 billion on average.

Annually, Sprint posted a loss of $2.4 billion or 84 cents per share while in 2008 the company posted a loss of $2.8 billion, or 98 cents per share. In 2009, the company posted revenue of $32.3 billion while for the same period last year it posted revenue of $35.6 billion.

Another worry for the wireless service provider company is the loss of valuable customers. A large number of its valuable customers continue to shift to competitors like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless in the last quarter of the year. Sprint lost about 504,000 postpaid customers in the last quarter according to the officials of the company. However, the company managed to grab 435,000 prepaid customers. At the end of 2009 Sprint's customer base was reported 48.1 million as compared to 49.3 million in 2008.