In the midst of a controversy involving union workers threatening to strike, criticisms from Senator Bernie Sanders and efforts to build up a new media empire with Hearst’s help, Verizon have managed to post decent numbers for the first quarter of 2016. Although growth was somewhat minimal, they did manage to stay profitable. Specifically, they experienced revenue of roughly $1.06 per share, up from $1.02 per share in the first quarter of 2015. This is growth to the tune of about 3.9%, which may sound small, but is no small feat in today’s economic climate for non-essential paid services. While the strikes and various controversies, as well as investments in their new media efforts, happened fairly recently, Verizon won’t be reporting the results of those losses until their second quarter report, set to come out in July.
Verizon has about 640,000 new subscriptions and less than one percent customer churn to thank for their decent numbers this quarter on the wireless front, while Fios showed 5 percent growth from last year, boasting roughly 96,000 new signups for internet and 36,000 new signups for video and cable services through Fios. Fios services’ churn, if present, was not mentioned. As for operating revenues, overall services and other categories experienced a small drop in revenue, about 1.4%. Wireless equipment revenue, however, more than made up for this, boasting phenomenal year on year growth amounting to 17.2%. Altogether, this led to a 0.6% growth in operating revenues, which contributed greatly to the total revenue growth figure of 3.09%. The biggest contributor to this figure was a 2.1% jump in net income.
Part of the revenue was Verizon’s sale of their landline businesses in Florida, California and Texas, which was used to pay down operating and equipment debts that had been hanging around. With the Hearst deal and the expansion of their Go90 service set to move more of their revenue and subscriber base to the highly profitable wireless side of the spectrum while Verizon goes through some exorbitant acquisition spending, just how good or bad the second quarter may look is, at this point, anybody’s guess.