Shares in US mobile operator Sprint Nextel rose 13 percent in trading yesterday after a report by Barron’s, the influential US trading publication, claimed the firm was being significantly undervalued by investors. The newspaper predicted that Sprint’s stock could climb as much as 50 percent in the coming months as a consequence of its recent acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA, and ongoing efforts to curb customer defections and increase levels of consumer satisfaction. “The company shows encouraging signs of a turnaround, the shares appear deeply undervalued,” wrote Barron’s. “Any return to growth mode would be a bonus for those who bucked the crowd to give Sprint the benefit of the doubt.”

Sprint continues to lose postpaid (contract) customers to rivals, losing 801,000 in its last reported quarter. However, it is faring much better in the prepaid sector, adding some 666,000 prepaid users in the third-quarter, and further strengthening its position via the Virgin Mobile USA acquisition, which closed last month. “You need to be in prepaid today; that’s where there’s a lot of growth going on in wireless,” Todd Rethemeier, an analyst at Hudson Square Research, told Bloomberg. Rethemeier also based his buy rating on Sprint’s potential as an acquisition target; the firm has been linked recently with a merger with Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA.