"Despite a host of near-term issues, Sprint (NYSE: S) has many of the attributes we look for in a turnaround stock: a solid core business, well-known brands, new management, manageable cash flow and even an activist shareholder to stir things up," notes George Putnam, III.

In his industry-leading The Turnaround Letter, the advisor looks expert at the firm, which he notes traces it roots back to the Brown Telephone Company in Kansas in 1899.

"When the long-distance market was opened to competition in the early 1980's, Sprint moved in aggressively. In early 2005, Sprint acquired Nextel, which had become a major wireless competitor with its innovative 'push to talk' technology that combines elements of the walkie talkie and the cell phone.

"The $35 billion transaction was supposed to vault Sprint into the leadership of the wireless market. Unfortunately, the combined company stumbled. Difficulty in integrating the two companies led to poor customer service which drove some consumers away.

"Investors, who had initially applauded the Nextel acquisition, pushing the stock above $27 in mid-2005, became concerned, and the stock has been in a steady decline for the past two-and-a-half years. And the company's poor earnings report on February 28 further discouraged Wall Street.

Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) -- with a name that sounds somewhat ironic today -- posted a mammoth $29.5 billion loss today as it wrote down $29.7 billion of the $36 billion 2005 purchase of Nextel Communications Inc. and other companies. In essence, acknowledging it paid (way) too much for that acquisition.

If that was the only ugly number in this fourth-quarter report, then perhaps investors wouldn't have reacted the way they did. Sprint's stock is down some 8% today, following the report, after the company had already lost over 57% of its value in the past 52 weeks; 37% in 2008 alone.

The news is unpleasant. Sprint reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $10.36 a share. While excluding the writedown Sprint earned 21 cents per share, beating the 18 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, its sales fell 5.7% to $9.85 billion, missing analysts' estimates. The third-biggest U.S. wireless carrier also had to borrow $2.5 billion under a credit line to get access to cash, although it claimed it made the move due to current credit market conditions.

And that's not all. Sprint is losing customers, specifically 683,000 valuable customers (contract, or "post-paid") during the quarter. While it saw an increase in customers through its Boost prepaid brand, recently appointed CEO Dan Hesse said the company would lose 1.2 million customers during the first quarter and would see additional losses in the second quarter. Also, subscribers on long-term contracts spent $58 a month on their bills, down from $60 a month last year. Somehow, the churn rate remained unchanged at 2.3% (most likely offset by Boost).

Sprint has announced it would stop paying dividends for the foreseeable future.

Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S)'s Dan Hesse hasn't been the CEO for very long, but he's wasting no time making a bunch of changes at the beleaguered wireless company. First off, he announced a slew of layoffs and three executive dismissals as a way to cut costs and bring in fresh blood to the company.

One of the last straws Hesse needed to address concerned the company's 2006 commitment to rolling out a nationwide WiMAX next-generation wireless data network in the U.S.

At the time, Sprint was seen as a pioneer in bringing anywhere, anytime high-speed data to most of the U.S. with its $5 billion commitment. As 2007 brought customer defections and hundreds of thousands of customer losses and missed profit targets, those plans were scaled back -- some called for them to be scrapped entirely -- so Sprint could focus on its core business: wireless voice service.

Hesse is apparently not going to let the naysayers get away with having Sprint just toss out its grand WiMAX ambitions, and Sprint may now be in talks with Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ: CLWR) to form a joint venture in a new WiMAX venture that would bring in outside money to help with the rather large capital expenditure that Sprint investors and pundits have been worried about in the wake of losing customers -- big time -- to its competitors. If Sprint can form a joint venture and bring in partners such as Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and retailer Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY), then its WiMAX plans may indeed have some life left.

Reporting one disastrous quarter after another in recent times, Sprint Nextel finally changed its top leadership last month, hiring telecom vet Dan Hesse. Hesse has wasted no time in starting to streamline the beleaguered company, announcing thousands of layoffs just a few weeks ago.

Then, last week came the dirty work -- canning executives that have been present during the fall of Sprint Nextel during 2007. CFO Paul Saleh -- the former interim CEO -- was booted out, as are Chief Marketing Officer Tim Kelly and Sales Chief Mark Angelino. Sprint's marketing has been the target of pundits for quite some time, even with the recently "Sprint Ahead" corporate message that seems to go over the heads of most consumers based from what I have seen. It's a great message -- but entirely too complicated for the average wireless customer to understand.

Kelly was a longtime Sprint employee, while Saleh and Angelino were Nextel veterans. Hesse is doing what Michael Dell did a year ago when he took over control of the company he founded -- bring in a ton of new blood. It's too early to see what Hesse will do to revive Sprint with a bunch of new top managers, but whatever moves he makes will surely place Sprint in better competitive position than where it rests now, at the bottom of the heap compared to wireless carrier competition.

Dan Hesse is the right person for the job at Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S). In addition to the new CEO reassuring the market that he means business by announcing more than a few thousand layoffs, Hesse has the skills to understand why the Sprint-Nextel merger was never really completed and take steps to finalize it into one single company, almost three years after the merger officially took place.

Sprint has lost hundreds of thousands of customers in many recent quarters due to the company not giving enough attention to its Nextel radio network. The thinking back in 2005 was that combining Sprint and Nextel into one company would give the single entity a huge customer count and put it on par with other wireless giants like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ). However, customer counts are meaningless if you jolt so many of them so badly that they head for the exit doors. That's precisely what has happened.

Here we are in January 2008, and Sprint has two headquarters -- one in Sprint's backyard of Kansas City, Missouri, and the other in Nextel's backyard of Reston, Virginia. Why on earth Sprint operates out of two geographical headquarters is a mystery, but it's symbolic of how the two companies really never merged outside of a single customer billing system (well, that's just my opinion). Sprint owns some massive assets in terms of wireless licenses around the U.S. and has a very capable and cutting-edge network. It should be doing anything but losing customers. Hopefully, Hesse can make that a reality soon. His success in Sprint spin-off Embarq is proof that he's the right person to attack Sprint's problems.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds no long or short positions in Sprint Nextel Corp. at this time.

Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel's (NYSE: S) new CEO, has last week resigned his seat on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) board of directors, according to the world's largest maker of mobile phones. With Sprint and Nokia basically not doing a single bit of business with each other these days, this is no surprise.

Nokia has never really jumped on the CDMA bandwagon, which is the technical standard Sprint Nextel predominantly uses for its U.S. wireless network. Nokia, though, is a huge supplier of handsets to AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile USA -- two of Sprint's largest wireless competitors.

The challenge Hesse has in front of him is no small potato. Sprint Nextel is in dire need of leadership that will bring results, consistent profits and some form of marketing that will steal customers back from the competition.

That competition, by the way, has punished Sprint in the last year by taking hundreds of thousands of customers away. Hesse's challenge will be whether he could manage the existing Sprint-Nextel post-merger mess in progress and get customer additions back on track for the wireless carrier.