Hey-o! T-Mobile's CEO is now fully unleashed to poke fun at rival Sprint, following the end of a possible $32 billion merger between the two operators.
So the ebullient John Legere has taken to his favorite medium of public address, Twitter Inc. , to -- surprise, surprise -- trash-talk the dramatic events at the third-ranked US operator this morning. (See Hesse Out, Claure In: Sprint Is Son's House Now!.)
"If you needed just one more reason to leave Sprint and join T Mobile," Legere tweeted Wednesday. "Now you might just have it....total Chaos at Sprint!"
Legere also advised new Sprint CEO Marcello Claure to tell people how to pronounce his now name now. "Looks like @sprint has a new #framily member... and he's got a lot of framily therapy to do, asap," tweeted Legere, tweaking Sprint for its "framily" ads, which feature a talking hamster father figure, among other things. (See Sprint Appoints Claure As New CEO and Sprint, T-Mobile: The Price War's On.)
Of course, T-Mobile US Inc. still needs to figure out how to grow faster to take on its larger rivals if a Sprint deal isn't happening now. On its recent second-quarter call, a more measured-sounding Legere stressed that T-Mobile has "multiple versions of things" it can do to grow "inorganically." He also stated, "This company is not in need of doing something to be successful in the short or medium term." (See Does T-Mobile Need Sprint to Scale?.)
Not all investors are convinced, it seems: T-Mobile's shares are down $2.89 -- or 8.55% -- at $31.01 in Wednesday afternoon trading.
— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading