Sprint Corp. names chief for wireless unit

Dan Margolies

Monday, Sept. 11, 2000 | 10:57 a.m.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Sprint Corp. on Friday named Charles Levine as chief operating officer of Sprint PCS, its fast-growing wireless unit.

Levine, 47, formerly chief sales and marketing officer for Sprint PCS, replaces Andrew Sukawaty, who stepped down as president and chief operating officer of the wireless business in June to join a cable television service in Europe.

Levine will answer to Ronald T. LeMay, president and chief operating officer of Sprint Corp., who has been serving as interim president of Sprint PCS since Sukawaty's departure. LeMay will relinquish his Sprint PCS post, and the position of president will remain vacant, a Sprint PCS spokeswoman said.

Levine joined Sprint PCS in January 1997. Before that, he was president of OctelLink and senior vice president of Octel Services, a voice-mail provider acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1997.

Levine was also president and chief executive officer of CAD Forms Technology, a pen-based computing company. He has held various managerial roles with AT&T, General Electric and Procter & Gamble. He has a master's degree in business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University.

Sprint PCS operates an all-digital wireless network serving more than 7.4 million subscribers. The company has PCS licenses covering all states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"One of the great things about this job is that I'm taking it with a company with very strong leadership and dominance in the most important things to consumers: clarity, connectivity and coverage," Levine said.

For the quarter that ended June 30, Sprint PCS posted a net loss of $456 million, or 46 cents per share, on revenues of $1.46 billion. That compared with a net loss of $555 million, or 61 cents per share, on revenues of $736 million a year earlier. The results reflect a two-for-one stock split in the first quarter of 2000.

During the quarter, Sprint PCS reported positive operating cash flow, a key measure watched by Wall Street, for the first time. The figure, $11 million, compared with a $338 million loss a year earlier.

Sprint PCS has its own tracking stock that trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "PCS." The stock closed Friday at $47.13, up $1.31, on volume of 3.65 million shares.