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T-Mobile Names A New CFO In The Wake Of Sprint Merger

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Cellphone carrier T-Mobile US, which successfully fought regulators for nearly two years to close a merger with rival Sprint, named a new finance chief on Wednesday as the company now faces integrating the acquisition amid the tumult stirred by Covid-19.

T-Mobile said that Peter Osvaldik, currently senior vice president of finance and chief accounting officer, will take over for outgoing CFO Braxton Carter, who was among the chief architects of the Sprint deal.

Carter, a 19-year veteran of MetroPCS and then T-Mobile when the companies merged in 2013, reworked his employment agreement last year to tie his exit to the conclusion of the Sprint merger. Carter, who became T-Mobile’s CFO in 2013, will retire July 1 and Osvaldik, 43, will assume the post. Carter, 52, will remain with the company as a consultant for up to six months after his retirement.

“Peter brings his proven leadership capabilities and strong financial acumen into this position at a critical time in the Un-carrier’s history, as we manage the significant complexities and huge opportunities inherent in this next chapter, integrating Sprint and delivering on the financial potential of the new T-Mobile,” said CEO Mike Sievert in a statement.

Osvaldik rose to the chief accounting officer role in June 2016. Between May 2014 and December 2015, he served as CAO at Outerwall, formerly known as Coinstar. Before Outerwall, Osvaldik was a senior manager at PWC, one of the Big Four accounting firms.

On April 1, T-Mobile announced the completion of the Sprint merger. The close of the deal also spurred on the shift of leadership from former CEO John Legere to current Chief Executive Mike Sievert.

T-Mobile further reworks its leadership ranks as it faces mounting challenges, including the integration of Sprint, the economic turmoil stirred by the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing shift to the fifth generation of cellular networking technology, commonly known as 5G.

While reporting its latest quarterly results in May, the last quarter before the close of the Sprint transaction, T-Mobile said it would face headwinds from the coronavirus pandemic through the rest of the year. The first quarter’s total revenue was mostly flat compared with the same period in 2019, rising only 0.3% to $11.1 billion. Company leaders said service revenues buoyed quarterly results. A drop in equipment sales, which were impacted by social distancing restrictions and retail store closures, pressured the top line, however, according to regulatory filings.

T-Mobile forecast that it would add as many as 150,000 postpaid customers in the current second quarter. Postpaid customers pay for service at the end of a billing cycle, as opposed to prepaid customers, and are considered a crucial metric for cellphone carriers. The company didn’t provide a projection for the remainder of the year. “The Sprint merger and pandemic add two degrees of difficulty to interpreting 1Q results. We emerge with the view T-Mobile itself, battling against these two challenges, chose to set itself a low bar for 2Q and none at all for 2020,” said analysts for Instinet in a research report. “T-Mobile will offer a fuller picture of the merged firm and pandemic impacts at its 2Q results call.”

The wireless carrier recently faced additional challenges in the form of widespread outages of its network on Monday. Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s president of technology, said in a posted message Tuesday that the outage’s “trigger event is known to be a leased fiber circuit failure from a third party provider in the Southeast."

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