Verizon Triples Profit in Q1, Affirms Position on Spectrum, Merger
Helped by wireless gains, Verizon’s Q1 profit was $1.44 billion, up almost 70 percent from the year-ago quarter. Chief Financial Officer Francis Shammo affirmed the carrier’s spectrum position during a conference call Thursday. Meanwhile, the carrier will stay on the sidelines on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger for now, he said.
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The carrier is “in a very good spectrum position,” Shammo said. “We think we have the spectrum we need and we are in a good position until about the year 2015 at this point,” he said. But Verizon will continue to keep its eyes open for additional spectrum, he said.
Regarding Verizon’s position on the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, “we have to let that go through due process with the federal government. … We will wait and see,” he said. “If it’s a market-based condition merger, we will be fine with that. If it’s a regulatory merger, then we'll have a harder time with it,” he said. Shammo declined to comment on the types of things Verizon may object to, but said the company would oppose conditions put on the merger that would impose further net neutrality regulations and/or force roaming arrangements. Additionally, he said: “We will not stand by if there are certain regulations put on us that we have to deliver certain things at a fixed price that’s set by a regulatory arm that has no authority over that regulation of price."
Verizon signed up 906,000 retail postpaid customers in the quarter, more than double a year ago. In its first quarter selling Apple’s smartphone, Verizon activated 2.2 million iPhones, even though they were only available for part of the quarter. The company began selling the iPhone Feb. 10. In two weeks, the carrier activated more than 260,000 of its first LTE smartphones, the HTC ThunderBolt, at the premium price of $249.99. Verizon will launch tier pricing mid-summer for both 3G and 4G devices, Shammo said: “That’s a definite.” The carrier’s LTE network deployment is going well and during tests, the network’s ability to deliver video and data has exceeded expectations, he said.
On the wireline side, Verizon’s revenue fell 2.2 percent year-over-year to $10.14 billion as consumers and businesses continued to shed traditional phone lines and DSL services. But the operator added 207,000 FiOS TV customers and 192,000 FiOS Internet customers. The company backed its full-year forecast for revenue growth of 4 percent to 8 percent and 8 percent earnings growth.