Perhaps you can try this workaround with NSMutableAttributedString which worked for me. The "." is put in place of the whitespace.
NSMutableAttributedString *string = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%i.", count]];
[string addAttribute:NSForegroundColorAttributeName value:[UIColor whiteColor] range:NSMakeRange(0,string.length-1)];
[string addAttribute:NSForegroundColorAttributeName value:[UIColor clearColor] range:NSMakeRange(string.length-1,1)];