While this time of year usually means that the Spring season is in full swing for the average consumer, for businesses it means posting details on the first quarterly earnings for the year. AT&T held its first quarter earnings call today for the 2016 calendar year and the details show a strong growth for the U.S. second largest wireless carrier. AT&T states that thanks mostly in part to connected devices, their Mexico services, and their Cricket Wireless brand, they have added a total of 2.3 million wireless net adds for their North American market, made up of 1.8 million adds in the U.S. and 529,000 in Mexico. AT&T’s phone net adds for the quarter were, however, quite a bit less at just 712,000 for the first quarter of the year, which includes numbers from both postpaid and prepaid devices, while postpaid churn was at 1.10 percent. AT&T also saw 186,000 net adds from their IP broadband services from Entertainment Group broadband.
The first quarter earned AT&T a total of $40.5 Billion in consolidated revenues which AT&T states is mostly due to their acquisition of DIRECTV, an area where AT&T saw a growth of 320,000 net adds for the service for subscribers in the U.S., but overall they saw a minor decline in the number of subscribers for their video services. DIRECTV’s positive influence on their consolidated revenues for the quarter has caused an overall increase of 24 percent compared to the same quarter from 2015.
Operating expenses and operating income have also seen an increase this quarter compared to the same time in 2015, as Q1 operating expenses for this year was at $33.4 Billion compared to $27 Billion the year before, while operating income was at $7.1 Billion compared to the $5.6 Billion in operating income that AT&T had the same time last year. Operating income margin also increased from 2015, moving up just slightly from 17.1 percent to 17.6 percent. When it comes to cash, Q1 results from this year saw AT&T with $7.9 Billion in cash from operations while their free cash flow was at $3.2 Billion, leading them to a 17 percent increase year over year. Diluted EPS was reported by the company at $0.61, while the diluted adjusted EPS saw an increase of 10.8 percent with a figure at $0.72.