AT&T has just announced their earnings for the second quarter of 2016, which ended on June 30th. The wireless carrier posted 2.1 million net adds on the wireless side, for the quarter. They stated that these adds were driven by connected devices, Cricket (their prepaid brand) and their business in Mexico. The company also posted a postpaid churn of 0.97%, stating that is their second-lowest churn rate ever. When it comes to DIRECTV, the company posted 342,000 net adds, and 38,000 global TV net adds. That gives them nearly 1 million satellite net adds since acquiring DIRECTV.
Back to the wireless side of things, the company added nearly 800,000 smartphones to their subscriber base. This offset the 600,000 decline in feature phone subscribers in their network. Meanwhile there were 185,000 phone net adds – which includes both prepaid and postpaid. When it comes to AT&T’s 4G LTE network, they now cover over 380 million Americans. Consolidated revenues were $40.5 billion, which is an increase of 22%, operating income increased 13.6%, net income was up 10.6% cash from operations were $10.3 billion an increase of 12.5%. AT&T’s free cash flow is $4.8 billion, an increase of 8.4%. Finally, earnings-per-share were $0.55 and adjusted EPS is $0.72. That’s up from $0.59 and $0.70 in Q2 2015.
AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson said in a prepared statement that his company’s results from the second quarter “continued our strong track record of delivering revenue, adjusted earnings and free cash flow growth. This steady execution done at scale gives us the financial strength to grow our business while returning substantial value to our shareholders.”
Posting 2.1 million net adds in a quarter is nothing to sneeze at. But it is worth noting that a big chunk of these net adds are from their business in Mexico (1.4 million net adds in the US). Which makes it a bit tough to compare to the other carriers here in the US, where they are only including customers in the US, and not Mexico too. Additionally, their prepaid brand Cricket, has been doing very well for AT&T. This shouldn’t be a big surprise, after all Cricket has been running some great promotions lately, and competing pretty tough with their competitors like Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and MetroPCS.
