T-Mobile USA Defections Distract Obermann’s Turnaround Plan

Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

As Deutsche Telekom AG Chief Executive Officer Rene Obermann strives to return the company’s European business to growth, the U.S. wireless unit he agreed to sell to AT&T Inc. for $39 billion is being left behind.

T-Mobile USA’s net loss of contract customers may have reached 350,000 last quarter, UniCredit SpA analyst Thomas Friedrich estimates. That would bring losses since the final quarter of 2010 to more than 1 million, cutting the operator’s contract-user base to 25.6 million. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization may have dropped 14 percent to $1.4 billion, the average of 10 estimates shows.