Challenges Facing Sprint Corporation (S)’s New CEO Marcello Claure

Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S) has recently appointed a new CEO, Marcelo Claure, something that the Street didn’t react positively to. The day when this news was announced Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S)’s stock fell more than 15%. Perhaps the Strret is undermining the abilities of Mr. Claure, who not only founded Brightstar Corp., but also made it a $10.5 billion company in gross revenue.

Bloomberg Intelligence’s John Butler and Bill Ho, principal analyst at 556 Ventures, discussed the challenges and opportunities Mr. Claure would be facing as Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S)’s new CEO and the expectations of Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S)’s shareholders from him.

“He has proven himself to be a terrific entrepreneur, having grown Brightstar from 0 to $10.5 billion, but it’s not the telecom business, right, so he is sort of an unknown in people, there is a question mark in investors’ minds and a question mark in the industry as to whether he can do it, I would argue that Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S) needs that fresh blood to come in and  new energy to sort of take them to the next level because their old challenge was upping the technology and upgrading the network, their new challenge is marketing,” Butler said.

Bill Ho feels that the opportunity for Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S) lies in going after  T-Mobile Us Inc (NYSE:PCS) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T). He also mentioned that Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S) has a bunch of data plans that will target data plans of other companies, but they would be unveiled depending upon what strategy the new CEO wants to take. He also mentioned that Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S)’s Family plan is pretty complex to be understood by a normal user and Sprint Corporation (NYSE:S) needs to make a choice as to which competitor does the company needs to up against.

“I think, it’s going to be a partnership and that’s what drove he choice, I mean Son [Masayoshi Son] and Claure have a relationship going back a couple of years, but that relationship is based on mutual respect as entrepreneurs, they both built companies,” Butler added.

Disclosure: None