It was a half-empty or half-full quarterly revenue report for Verizon Tuesday. Just weeks from the Feb. 10 sale of Apple’s iPhone, Verizon fourth quarter profits fell $2.6 percent to $26.4 billion, a hair’s-breath from analyst expectations of $26.48 billion. However, the carrier also reported earlier today adding 872,000 postpaid customers, far exceeding Wall Street expectations of 646,000.
Although consumers could have put off a decision to join Verizon Wireless until the carrier begins selling the iPhone, subscriber growth was described as “spectacular” by one analyst. “The expectation of [Verizon] getting an iPhone appears not to have had an impact,” Stifel Nicolaus’ Christopher King told Reuters.
Verizon’s profit nearly doubled to $4.65 billion, up from $2.37 billion a year ago. Some signs of growth from the private sector were also reported, with a 1.3 percent increase in business and government sales.
Thursday, Verizon Wireless rival AT&T is expected to report is financial standings.
[Reuters, Silicon Alley Insider]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
