Verizon on Tuesday reported a 5% jump in third quarter revenue helped by the consolidation of AOL’s numbers and the continuing strong performance of Verizon Wireless.
The U.S. telco giant added 1.3 million postpaid subscribers in the three months to 30 September, comprised of 430,000 phone customers and 818,000 tablet customers. Verizon’s mobile customer base now stands at 110.8 million, 105 million of whom are postpaid customers.
Almost 80 million of those 105 million use 4G devices, and Verizon’s 4G network carried 89% of the telco’s mobile data traffic in Q3.
"Verizon Wireless posted another quarter of quality connections growth – even better than in the second quarter – while maintaining high customer loyalty and profitability," said Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, in a statement.
Indeed, Verizon’s second quarter saw retail postpaid additions of 1.1 million.
Verizon’s fixed-line business reported net additions of 114,000 FiOS Internet, and 42,000 FiOS video connections, driving its Internet and video customer bases to 6.9 million and 5.8 million respectively.
On the financial side, Verizon’s revenue came in at US$33.2 billion up 5% year-on-year thanks in part to the consolidation AOL’s revenue. Verizon completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of in June. Excluding AOL, Verizon’s year-on-year revenue growth would have been 3.1%.
Meanwhile, pretax profit increased to $6.4 billion from $5.7 billion a year earlier, and net income jumped to $4.2 billion from $3.8 billion.
