Verizon Revenue Rises as Retail Postpaid Subscribers Increase

Verizon Communications’ quarterly revenue rose 6.8 percent due to an increase in subscribers who pay for services after use, and a rise in average revenue per account as users added more devices to shared data plans.

The company, however, reported a loss of $2.15 billion, or 54 cents per share, for the fourth quarter compared with a profit of $7.92 billion, or $1.76 per share, a year earlier, mainly due to valuation of benefits plan and pension adjustments.

Shares in Verizon dipped slightly to $47.95 in premarket trading after closing at $48.25 on Wednesday.

Excluding items, Verizon earned 71 cents per share, matching Wall street estimates, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose to $33.19 billion from $31.07 billion, slightly higher than analysts’ expectations of $32.69 billion.

Verizon’s retail postpaid average revenue per account rose to $158.82 from $157.21, but was below $161.64 estimated by analysts polled by research firm StreetAccount.
The company added a net 2 million postpaid subscribers, more than the 1.5 million subscribers it added last quarter and 1.65 million subscribers it added in the same quarter a year ago.

Customer defections, known as churn, in postpaid accounts rose to 1.4 percent. Verizon had warned earlier this month that heavy competition and promotional offers in the holiday season would increase its churn rate both from last year and the last quarter.
Total revenues in its wireless business grew 11 percent from a year ago but dropped 1.6 percent for its FiOS Internet and video product business.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru and Malathi Nayak in New York; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Chizu Nomiyama)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.