Reston-based Sprint Nextel announced Wednesday it will move its corporate headquarters, currently in Reston, to the campus of its operational headquarters in Overland Park, Kan.
“The impact on the numbers of people here will be minimal,” Sprint Nextel spokesman James Fischer said, and will involve the relocation of only a small number of executives.
Of Sprint Nextel’s approximately 60,000 employees, about 4,440 are in the Washington metro area and 13,300 associates are in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Sprint Nextel felt it was “important to have senior executives in one location to better focus on the operations,” Fischer said. The consolidation will cut down on travel and real estate costs. Sprint currently leases space in nine buildings in Reston, according to Fischer. Employees may be moved around within the Reston buildings when space is freed up, although Fischer did not know whether fewer buildings would be occupied in Reston as a result.
Most of the departments in the company have some associates in the Reston campus, including finance, human resources, communications, sales, marketing, government relations and networks. The Reston campus will still perform all the same functions, Fischer said.
While the move doesn’t have a “material impact” on the company’s performance, it is an “indication that new CEO Dan Hesse is beginning to put his fingerprints on the company,” said Stanford Group Co. analyst Michael Nelson.
The consolidation also may be “indicative of additional strategic decisions,” Nelson said. He added next steps might include a change in the marketing message of the company to differentiate it from the competition, and a possible spin-off of Sprint Nextel’s forthcoming WiMax broadband network. WiMax could then merge with Clearwire, which is partnering with Sprint Nextel on the WiMax network, to attract additional investors, Nelson said.
