The Chairman of Sprint Nextel Corp., James Hance, has acknowledged that the company erred by failing to reveal the future costs of selling Apple’s iPhone during an investor meeting last week and vowed to disclose the information in its third-quarter earnings later this month.
The costs Sprint must incur to subsidize Apple’s popular smartphone have been the source of speculation since The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the company has committed to purchase at least 30.5 million iPhones from Apple despite the fact that it would lose money on the deal until 2014.
“It was a mistake not to disclose the impact of the iPhone – a mistake we will fix," Hance told Bloomberg. “We will talk about the impact when we talk about the third-quarter earnings."
Sprint, which has rights for the first time ever to sell the iPhone, will release its third-quarter results on Wednesday, Oct. 26.
Shares of the company were up 14 cents, or 5.88 percent, to $2.52 as of 1:08 p.m. ET Wednesday, marking an improvement since the stock tanked to $2.10 on Monday, Oct. 10.
