Overland Park ? Sprint Corp.’s shares fell Friday, dragging down rivals’ stocks, after the third- biggest U.S. long-distance telephone company said sales and wireless-customer growth this year would lag forecasts.

Shares of Sprint’s PCS Group mobile-phone unit, the nation’s fourth-biggest wireless carrier, slid 27 percent, while stock of the company’s local and long-distance business declined 18 percent. AT&T Corp. and AT&T Wireless Services Inc. also fell.

Wireless stocks have tumbled on concern about slowing subscriber growth, while long-distance shares have fallen on lower sales. Sprint said Thursday long-distance and local-phone revenue will drop at a faster-than-expected rate in 2002. It will add from 10 percent to 15 percent fewer wireless users than the 3 million it forecast, partly because of price competition and new credit policies.

“This is a sign they’re not just going to cut prices to get customers,” said John Maxwell, an analyst at Waddell & Reed Financial Inc., referring to Sprint PCS. The firm owned 1.35 million shares of Sprint PCS and 4.46 million shares of Sprint FON Group, the long-distance unit, as of March.

U.S. mobile-phone companies will see customer growth of 14 percent this year, the slowest rate since the industry began in 1985, Prudential Securities Inc. has said. Sprint PCS added about 4 million new users in 2001.

Sprint said Thursday revenue at its local and long-distance business will drop at a mid-single-digit percentage rate this year, rather than the low single-digit decline it had expected. Sales fell 4 percent to $16.9 billion last year.

Sprint’s wireless business is suffering from a dependence on low-income customers, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. analyst Luiz Carvalho wrote in a research note. Like analysts with at least a dozen brokerages, he downgraded the shares.

Shares that track the Sprint PCS wireless unit fell $1.59 to $4.40 and were the fifth most active in U.S. trading. They have fallen 82 percent this year. Shares of Overland Park-based Sprint’s long-distance division dropped $2.54 to $11.75. They have declined 41 percent this year.

Sprint PCS said it expects to add 300,000 wireless customers in the second quarter, compared with analysts’ forecasts for 550,000 to 725,000, because of price cuts by rivals and more stringent credit checks for potential subscribers.