Verizon's First Quarter 2014 Earnings
It looks like T-mobile was telling the truth when they mentioned the other day that they had virtually all of the industries subscriber gains in the most recent quarter as Verizon Wireless recently announced a net of just 549,000 new subscribers. Still Verizon has a pension for figuring out how to milk it's customer base for more money as they announced they currently have a 15% take rate in the Edge program which they say could double in the second quarter.
Verizon also considers the tablet market to be way underutilized and they expect that to offer a solid revenue stream moving forward. There were 814,000 postpaid tablet activations in the quarter more than doubling the totals of a year ago. Virtually all of them were 4G and expansion of the category is planned moving forward.
They also announced there are 61.3 million smartphones on the network of which 22 million are 3G and 23 million are basic phones. Expect to see Verizon try to more aggressively push those 3G and basic phone users to 4g.
Although everything didn't turn up roses in the mobile front, Verizon still managed to snag a 23.5% EPS increase compared to last year. This is the eight time in the last nine quarters that they have experienced double digit increases in reported and adjusted EPS. Wireless growth was still up 6.9% by revenues. Don't forget Verizon is more than just a wireless communications company as they now have several revenue streams these days such as FIOS for example. It will be interesting to see what happens moving forward now with the continued pricing wars, and will T-mobile be able to steal more customers away from Verizon next quarter?