Verizon Posts Q1 Numbers, Misses on Revenues and Earnings

April 20th, 2017 by · 5 Comments

Verizon helped kick off telecoms earnings season on a sour note this morning with its first quarter results.  Revenues of $29.8B, whereas analysts had been expecting more like $30.5B.  Excluding one time items, earnings per share of $0.95 also came in three pennies under expectations, and so the market will probably take them down a bit when it opens.

On the wireless side, revenues were $20.9B, down 5.1% over the same quarter last year due to decreased overage revenue and fewer postpaid customers.  They saw retail postpaid churn of 1.15% during the quarter.  LTE traffic levels were up 57% over the same quarter last year, however.    During Q2 the company plans to roll out some 11 pre-commercial 5G pilots as it prepares for the next technology wave.

On the wireline side, FIOS revenues were up 4.7% over the same period last year, adding some 35K connections while losing 13K on the video piece.  Revenues were down 0.6% to $7.9B, and down 3.2% if one excludes the contribution from XO Communications.

Earlier this week Verizon did a big deal for fiber from Corning for its nextgen wireless backhaul buildout and was talking up high profile merger possibilities with the likes of Comcast, Disney, CBS, and Charter.

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Categories: Financials · ILECs, PTTs · Wireless

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5 Comments So Far


  • Anonymous says:

    Two predictions for 2017:

    1. Lowell is about to get fired.
    2. VZ will buy DISH.

  • These carriers have no way to increase revenue. All buckets – cellular, TV, voice and broadband – are saturated. Enterprise and wholesale are declining for all of them. IP and Ethernet have really destroyed their TDM margins. And they either didn’t see it coming or didn’t care.

    These mergers are just to stave off the inevitable: BK. No way to carry this much debt. WIND $4.9B in debt on $5.4B (+ ELNK so $6.3B). VZ $115B in debt on $120B in revenue. AT&T will have $175 billion in debt after the TW merger. CLink has $17B in rev on $20B in debt – after L3 it will be top heavy.

    Where do they think the FCF will come from to pay down debt, service the network and give dividends?

    Frontier had to borrow $1B to pay dividends!!!!

    • Johnny Lightning says:

      If you go back 15 years and compare your spend on cable, internet and wireless you’ll notice that you probably had one or two of these services. now you spend $ 3-5 K a year them just from the consumer perspective. With OTT, IoT , AI and autonomous vehicles the demand for fiber and capacity are set to explode. Telecom and IT are highly capital intensive hence why google pulled out of google fiber. These big providers are now going to continue to buy and invest otherwise the alternative is be disrupted by some future unknown technology or competitor.

    • Anonymous says:

      At least T and VZ have wireless as a FCF cushion. With 5G and IoT and driverless autos, they still have a chance. They all need to figure out how to Googleize (advertising) or Appleize (simple consumer products/apps) their businesses.

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