AT&T rakes in $40.5B in revenue but loses video subscribers in Q2

By Williams Pelegrin July 22, 2016

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AT&T unveiled its Q2 2016 earnings today, and though the company met Wall Street expectations in some areas, it fell short in others.

Starting with the overall picture, AT&T reported earnings of $3.4 billion, which equate to 72 cents a share when adjusted for merger costs with DirecTV and other expenses. The carrier also brought in $40.5 billion in revenue, with the figures meeting Wall Street expectations of 72 cents a share and revenue of $40.63 billion, according to Fortune.

The figures compare favorably to Q2 2015, when AT&T reported a net income of $3.08 billion and $33.02 billion in revenue.

AT&T also added 1.4 million new wireless subscribers, 257,000 of which were postpaid customers. Overall, the carrier ended its June 2016 with a total of 77.3 million wireless subscribers, with a churn rate — this is a figure that informs investors the rate of monthly cancellations — of 0.97 percent for post-paid customers, the second-lowest churn rate AT&T has ever reported.

Where AT&T took some damage is with video subscribers, with the carrier losing 49,000 during the second quarter. Broken down, AT&T added 342,000 DirecTV subscribers, but lost 391,000 U-Verse customers as the company looks to double down on its DirecTV acquisition. Overall, 80 percent of AT&T’s 25.3 million television subscribers are on DirecTV, with AT&T chief financial officer John Stephens saying the second quarter is usually a slow one in the pay-for-TV business.

“We would expect to see improvements on both sides,” said Stephens, though the executive also mentioned AT&T’s upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service, which he said will impress folks who prefer streaming over subscribing to a video service.

Furthermore, the carrier raked in 74,000 IP broadband subscribers, down from the 186,000 it added during the first quarter, with total broadband revenues rising 7 percent. Unfortunately for AT&T, its 14.2 million broadband subscribers are down from its 14.4 million total during the first quarter.

Hopefully for AT&T, its financials will compare favorably to Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s, with the latter two companies set to release their numbers sometime soon.

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