News
U.S. telco posts strong revenues in Q2, but a year after DirecTV buy its satellite customer growth is failing to offset U-verse losses.
AT&T this week talked up the number of satellite customers it has added since acquiring DirecTV a year ago, but the figures show that in the second quarter of this year it lost more U-verse video customers than it added to the satellite platform.
"One year after our acquisition of DirecTV, the success of the integration has exceeded our expectations," said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, in a statement accompanying the U.S. telco’s Q2 numbers.
"Cost synergies are ahead of target, we’ve added nearly 1 million DirecTV subscribers since the acquisition, and our new video streaming services are scheduled to roll out later this year," Stephenson said.
However, he glossed over the fact that in Q2 AT&T added 342,000 subscribers to the DirecTV platform, but lost 391,000 U-verse customers, making for a net video customer loss of 49,000.
Furthermore, AT&T has lost video customers for the last five quarters.
It closed the US$48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV in late July last year.
Naturally, the satellite company has had an impact on its top line though.
Revenues for the second quarter came in at $40.52 billion, up close to 23% compared with the year-ago period. The operator’s Entertainment division, which includes DirecTV, contributed $12.71 billion, compared with $5.78 billion a year earlier.
AT&T’s Business Solutions unit remains its largest division, bringing in $17.58 billion in revenues, virtually flat on the year-ago quarter, while the telco’s consumer mobile business contributed $8.19 billion, down by 6.5%.
AT&T’s overall base of mobile connections fell by 414,000 to 54.26 million during the quarter. However, the telco says its postpaid customer net additions came in at 72,000, while prepaid net adds stood at 365,000, giving it total branded net additions of 437,000.
The operator’s international business, including its recently-acquired operations in Mexico as well as other businesses in Latin America, generated $1.83 billion in revenues, compared with $491 million a year earlier. AT&T has increased its mobile customer base in Mexico by 1.4 million since Q2 last year to 9.96 million.
AT&T turned in a net profit of $3.41 billion in Q2, up from $3.08 billion a year earlier.
