UPDATE 4-Sprint's loss widens, sees slow improvement

The company expects post-paid churn, or customer cancellations, and net post-paid subscriber losses to improve marginally in the current quarter, attributing the improvement to typical seasonal trends and better customer service.

"I see very little to get excited about one way or the other," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris King, adding that, even if Sprint's subscriber trends improve this quarter, "it's still not going to be a pretty number either way."

Sprint, which ended the quarter with 52.8 million subscribers, reported postpaid churn of 2.45 percent compared with 2.3 percent churn in the fourth quarter. First-quarter prepaid churn rose to 9.9 percent from 7.5 percent.

Sprint, which has been rumored as a potential acquisition target for Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE), said it would update shareholders in August on its assessment of its business model, its sale and marketing plans and its financial outlook.

Hesse did not intend to fill the roles of Chief Operating Officer and a Chief Marketing Officer as he favored a flatter management structure.

AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L), both reported customer growth in the first quarter and analysts have said these bigger companies took market share from Sprint.

Sprint said wireless service revenue fell 9 percent year over year and 6 percent sequentially.

The company, which last week announced a WiMax venture with Clearwire Corp (CLWR.O), has seen its share price fall about 65 percent since its $35 billion purchase of Nextel Communications in 2005. It wrote off most of the value of that deal in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Sprint's biggest affiliate, iPCS Inc (IPCS.O), said on Monday it was suing Sprint over the Clearwire deal because it would breach their exclusivity agreement. Sprint shares closed down 1.5 percent at $9.24 on New York Stock Exchange. (Additional reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Derek Caney and Andre Grenon)