Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) kicked off the winter earnings season this morning with their Q4 numbers, which had good news, bad news, and nice big pension-related charge of $1.48 per share. That’s even bigger than the $1.20 non-cash pension charge they posted in 2011 — it’s not really non-recurring if it happens every year, right? But anyway…
Revenues checked in at $30.045B, up 8.5% over the same period last year and crossing the $30B mark for the first time. Analysts had been projecting something more like $29.8B. But there was a price for that growth, as adjusted earnings per share of $0.38 came in lower than expected, even if one excludes the $0.07 of Sandy recovery impacts.
Some of the earnings miss probably comes from a big smartphone quarter, a dichotomy powered by those pesky subsidies. They added 2.2 million net retail additions to reach 98.2 million in all, with smartphone penetration now making up 58% of their postpaid customers.
Wireline revenues fell to 10.0B, down 1.5% over the same period last year, with global enterprise revenues down 2.1% to $3.8B. Verizon also gave a figure for its wireline EBITDA of 21.3%, which would have been 22.1% if Sandy hadn’t paid her visit to virtually the carrier’s entire territory. They’re still working through some of the damage in southern Manhattan, replacing copper with fiber rather than rebuild the old.
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Categories: Financials · ILECs, PTTs · Wireless
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what I find interesting here is the pension subject. when people talk about a “fiscal cliff”, we are over it folks with regard to pension obligation in this country which is crushing us ( see municipal bankruptcies) and we haven’t seen the worse!