NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp Chief Executive Dan Hesse said on Thursday the company faces a difficult 2008 and would take "many quarters" to accomplish a turnaround and rebuild its wireless brand.
"To be frank, the issues we face are more difficult than what I expected to find," Hesse said on a conference call to discuss quarterly results.
"We will have a difficult 2008 as we turn this ship around, but the long-term looks promising," he said. "In a recurring revenue model like ours, momentum takes time to turn in the opposite direction .... so this turnaround will not happen for many quarters."
Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile service, posted a quarterly loss on a steep impairment charge and forecast deeper subscriber losses in the first quarter.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Michele Gershberg, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
