Verizon’s Q3 Helps Cheer the Markets

With the government shutdown showdown finally behind us, all we needed is a bit of good news to wipe away a bit of the gloom. Verizon did its part, kicking off earning season with a better than expected quarter despite the distracting overhang of the pending Vodafone deal.

Verizon posted total revenues of $30.28B, one notch higher than analysts expected, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.77, which was three pennies to the good.

On the wireless side, revenues were up 8.4% over the same quarter last year, reaching $20.4B. Total retail connections reached 101.2M, a net addition of 1.1M of which 927K were postpaid. The LTE rollout has been substantially completed, covering more than 303M people nationwide when its rural partner coverage is included.

And on the increasingly overshadowed wireline business, revenues were up by 4.3% over the same quarter last year. That growth was powered by FIOS as usual, which added 173K internet and 135K video subscribers during the quarter. They now expect to have just 1M remaining copper customers within FIOS markets by the end of this year.

As usual, you have to look way down at the bottom of the release to see Global Enterprise and Global Wholesale were down 3% and 6.3%, respectively, although the company highlighted growth for strategic products as is their normal practice.

But overall, the market is quite happy with the numbers and the stock is up a buck and a quarter in the premarket.  The Vodafone deal won’t close for a while yet, so it’s good to see that they didn’t take their eye off the ball.

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Categories: Financials · ILECs, PTTs · Wireless