T-Mobile is getting ready to announce their Q4 results (and also their year-end results, a look back at 2015 if you will). While the carrier has already announced that they added over 2 million subscribers in the quarter, the official earnings will be coming up pretty soon. Analysts are sharing their thoughts on what T-Mobile will announce and Evercore ISI believes that the third largest carrier will announce increases or growth in both revenue and subscribers. Something many carriers are struggling to do.
While other carriers are either adding subscribers while diminishing their revenue, or raising revenue but not adding more customers, T-Mobile seems to be able to do both. Analysts are expecting their momentum to continue into 2016, which we are almost a third of the way through the first quarter. Sprint is expected to be adding a ton of new customers in their Q4 report, but with revenue down analysts are skeptical about how well that will work out for the carrier. While analysts are expecting AT&T to lose about 300,000 postpaid customers in the same quarter, and Verizon gaining 525,000 postpaid customers. With Verizon’s earnings report set for January 21st, we should know more tomorrow.
For the past two years, T-Mobile has had some pretty impressive earnings reports. Adding over 1 million customers each time. Now in terms of revenue and ARPU, it hasn’t been as pretty but it has been getting better and better each quarter. Even with T-Mobile still covering ETF’s and device leasing payments for customers to switch on over to T-Mobile. The magenta carrier has been leading the price war and is definitely making the competitors feel it. In fact, Sprint has felt it the most. With their chairman (also the CEO of SoftBank) having lost over $3.2 billion since acquiring Sprint nearly 30 months ago. AT&T and Verizon have also felt it and have started to lower their prices. And recently Verizon even started running ads to cover fees to bring customers on over to Verizon. Watching how the earnings play out over the next few weeks will definitely be interesting to see. Especially when it comes to Sprint and T-Mobile who are competing the most.