T-Mobile has now announced its financial results for the first-quarter of 2018 highlighting a continuation of it strong performance over the past couple of years. Specifically, T-Mobile has confirmed the three months leading up to March 31, 2018, culminated in total revenue of $10.46 billion, including $7.8 billion in service revenue alone. This marks a year-over-year increase compared to Q1, 2017, where the company reported $9.61 billion in total revenue. Although, it also represents a 2.8-percent decrease when compared to the $10.76 billion noted for the fourth-quarter of last year.
What is always an interesting metric for carriers is how many net customers they have added during the period. For the last quarter, T-Mobile has confirmed 1.4 million net customer additions which continues the trend set with revenue – with the number of net additions up from the 1.14 million noted for Q1, 2017, but down compared to the 1.85 million noted during Q4, 2017. When viewed from a wider perspective, T-Mobile explains this sees Q1, 2018, as the twentieth consecutive quarter where the carrier has seen net additions totaling more than one million. Looking at the 1.4 million number a little closer and this breaks down to include 617,000 postpaid and 199,000 prepaid net additions and as a result of these first-quarter indications T-Mobile has raised its 2018 outlook to reflect expected postpaid net customer additions for the year to be between 2.6 and 3.3 million. While the company’s postpaid churn rate continued in the right direction coming in at a “record-low” 1.07-percent, prepaid churn (3.94-percent) was up quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.
As is usually the case with these announcements the company typically provides further insight into the current level of 4G LTE coverage offered and in terms of Q1, 2018, T-Mobile states that it now covers 322 million with a view to achieving coverage of 325 million by the end of 2018. It is worth pointing out these are the exact same figures T-Mobile stated three months ago, so while the company has highlighted this aspect today as part of its current state of business, unlike the other numbers provided there has been no meaningful change on this front during the first quarter of 2018. As to be expected, there was also no major reference made to T-Mobile’s announcement over the weekend of the company’s intention to merge with Sprint.
