News
U.S. operator talks up customer additions at Wireless, Fios businesses; returns to net profit.
Verizon on Thursday presented a strong set of financial results for the fourth quarter of last year, reporting customer growth at its mobile and fibre broadband and TV businesses, and a return to the black.
The U.S. telco generated revenues of US$34.25 billion in the three months to the end of December, up 3.2% year-on-year.
Its net profit came in at $5.51 billion, reversing a $2.15 billion loss from the same quarter a year earlier.
Verizon’s mobile business accounts for the lion’s share of its turnover, bringing in $23.73 billion in Q4. Mobile service revenues contracted by more than $1 billion, but Verizon Wireless saw equipment sales grow by 28% to $5.4 billion as more customers chose to buy new devices using instalment price plans.
The telco ended 2015 with 106.53 million mobile connections, up 4.45 million on end-2014. Net adds for Q4 were down by 34.1% on the year-ago quarter to 1.36 million; the addition of 1.52 million retail postpaid customers more than offset a decline in the company’s prepaid base.
On the wireline side, growth came from the Fios fibre business. Verizon added 99,000 Fios Internet connections in Q4, 20,000 video subscribers, and 51,000 residential digital voice subscriptions; all net adds figures were down on the year-ago quarter though.
However, Fios generated $3.53 billion in revenues during the quarter, up 6.8% year-on-year.
"In 2015, Verizon delivered strong and balanced results in a dynamic competitive environment while returning more than $13.5 billion to shareholders," Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam aid in a statement accompanying the results.
Full-year group revenues grew by 3.6% to $131.62 billion and the telco posted a net profit of $18.38 billion, up 53.7%.
"At the same time, Verizon built and acquired next-generation network capabilities that position the company to be an innovator in the digital-first mobile world in 2016 and beyond," he said.
Verizon’s 2015 highlights included its $4 billion acquisition of AOL in June, and AOL’s subsequent $1.75-per-share takeover of mobile ad marketplace Millennial Media. The company also made reference to the launch of its go90 social entertainment platform and its Thingspace IoT developer toolset, amongst other things.
It also noted that it invested around $28 billion in spectrum licences and capital for future network capacity.
