Just days after announcing its plans to merge with T-Mobile, Sprint elevated current CEO Marcelo Claure to executive chairman of the company and CFO Michel Combs to CEO. Claure will also take on the additional role of COO of SoftBank and CEO of SoftBank International. The two executives are expected to move into their new roles by the end of the month. In addition, Sprint will be looking for a replacement to Combs in the CFO role.

In an earnings call with investors, Claure said that the move will allow him to focus on the merger with T-Mobile CEO John Legere without compromising Sprint’s day-to-day operations. He also is planning to spend time in Washington, D.C., working with regulators to get the deal approved.

Besides overseeing the pending merger, Claure, who has been Sprint’s CEO since 2014, will be responsible for creating new opportunities and potential collaboration between Sprint and SoftBank’s portfolio companies in areas like Internet of Things, automation and artificial intelligence (AI). These are all areas where SoftBank has been actively investing and will be critical to Sprint and T-Mobile as they deploy a 5G network.

Combs, meanwhile, only joined Sprint at the beginning of the year, replacing Tarek Robbiati. Combs previously was the CEO of French cable company Altice, where he oversaw the firm following the close of Altice’s acquisition of Cablevision.

Best Quarter

It’s probably notable that Sprint reported its first annual profit in 11 years. The company posted a profit of $7.4 billion for fiscal year 2017 that ended March 31. Sprint said that it would have made a profit even without the $7.1 billion in corporate tax reform that it reported in its fiscal third quarter.

The company also reported about $1.1 billion in combined year-over-year cost reductions in administrative costs and service costs. It said that it was the fourth year it had recorded more than $1 billion in year-over-year cost reductions bring the total savings to about $6 billion.

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