Verizon, AT&T Post Strong Q1 Results Due to Wireless, Fios
Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. reported good first-quarter earnings as a result of Fios and Fiber net additions.
Verizon rebounded from last year’s first quarter’s slight losses. During the first quarter of 2021, Verizon saw a total revenue of $22.8 billion, an increase of 4.7 percent year-over-year. The company’s total business revenue was $7.8 billion, an increase of 1.3 percent from the same period last year.
The first-quarter growth was due to wireless service revenue of $16.7 billion, an increase of 2.4 percent year-over-year. Fios Internet net additions also played a part. Verizon added 98,000 consumer additions, an increase from 59,000 from the same period last year. And a total of 102,000 Fios Internet net additions, the most in the first quarter since 2015.
During the first quarter, Verizon also expanded its 5G internet to 55 cities across the country, but not New York City.
Verizon’s consolidated revenue $32.9 billion, up 4.0 percent.
“Verizon is off to an excellent start in 2021 as we met the challenge of intense competition in the first quarter by achieving revenue growth across our three business segments,” said Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg. “This year began with a transformative milestone for our company with our success in the recent C-Band spectrum auction. We continue to strengthen our networks, execute on our Network-as-a-Service strategy and focus on the five vectors that underpin our growth framework and position us to deliver success in 2021 and beyond.”
While AT&T’s Consumer Wireline and Business Wireline units saw a decline, AT&T’s communications operations revenues were up 52 percent year-over-year up to $28.2 billion due to wireless offsetting the declines. It had a revenue of $28.2 billion, up 5.2 percent compared to the same period last year.
Consumer Wireline was down 0.4% year-over-year with a revenue of $3.1 billion. This was due to the decline in legacy voice and data services. 235,000 Fiber net additions, with IP broadband revenues up 4.6%, somewhat offset the declines. Business Wireline was down 3.5% year-over-year, bringing in a $6.0 billion revenue.
AT&T’s strong first-quarter results were also due to an increase in HBO and HBO Max subscribers. Subscription revenues were up 12.6 percent to $3.8 billion, compared to the same period last year.
AT&T had a consolidated revenue of $43.9 billion, up 2.5 percent.
“We continued to excel in growing customer relationships in our market focus areas of mobility, fiber and HBO Max,” said John Stankey, AT&T CEO. “We had another strong quarter of postpaid phone net adds, higher gross adds, lower churn and good growth in Mobility EBITDA. We also continue to increase penetration in markets where we offer fiber broadband and we’re moving quickly to deploy more fiber. HBO Max continued to deliver strong subscriber and revenue growth in advance of our international and AVOD launches planned for June.”
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