The third quarter isn’t even officially over just yet, but Verizon has already announced when they will hold their earnings call for the quarter. Which will take place on October 20th, 2016. Per usual, the report will be posted on their investor website at 7:30AM ET, and the earnings call will begin promptly at 8:30AM ET. On the call, investors and press will be able to ask big red questions about their financial numbers for the quarter. Keep in mind that the third quarter is usually a bit of an odd quarter. As it’s the quarter before the big holiday quarter, and a few smartphones launch, but not many. However, they will have the iPhone 7 launch under their belt by then, which T-Mobile and Sprint have already reported that pre-orders were far and away much higher than last year’s.
For the second quarter of the year – which ended on June 30th – Verizon posted 615,000 retail net additions. They also posted a churn rate of 0.94, which was pretty low. A bit surprising given how competitive the wireless industry has been in the past few years. As of the end of the second quarter, Verizon boasted 113.2 million retail connections. This is a 3.3% increase over the year before. Investors are hoping for more of the same this quarter, and even higher expectations are in the air, given the iPhone 7/iPhone 7 Plus launch being in September, right at the end of the third quarter. Typically the Galaxy Note 7 would play a huge role in their earnings, but given the recall that Samsung recently had to make for their latest flagship, it may be causing more harm than good for carriers with their earnings.
Verizon is typically one of the first to announce earnings each quarter. So AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint should be announcing their own shortly after big red has had their time in the spotlight. Sprint and T-Mobile both posted some pretty great numbers, while AT&T and Verizon were down. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the third quarter, and seeing if the smaller carriers can continue their momentum.