The company blamed this in part on lower equipment sales, although revenue from service declined as well, off 1.7 percent from the prior year.
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AT&T (T) this afternoon reported Q4 revenue that missed analysts’ expectations, and profit that was in line with consensus.
Another interesting mobile tidbit is that around 46 percent of AT&T’s postpaid smartphone customer base is on AT&T Next, meaning that almost half of AT&T’s postpaid phone users are on the upgrade program.
For the current quarter, Wall Street is looking for non-GAAP earnings of 71 cents per share with $41.72 billion in revenue. “Our DIRECTV integration is going well, and the customer response to our new integrated mobile and entertainment offers is strong”.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who hinted at the service back in December, said the company has been working on deals that will allow it to distribute video content from its DirecTV business to its wireless customers over its speedy 4G LTE network.
Excluding special items, adjusted earnings rose to $0.63 per share from $0.56 per share a year ago. The maturing US wireless market has forced AT&T to look for growth in areas like mobile video and has started bundling unlimited wireless data offers to attract TV subscribers. The nation’s second-largest wireless carrier said it added a total of 2.2 million wireless customers, but it only added 526,000 postpaid or monthly customers.
Analysts had been modeling $42.72 billion and 63 cents a share in net profit.
Wireline voice connections fell from a total of 22.8 million to 22.12 million quarter-over-quarter, and wireline broadband connections slipped from 15.83 million to 15.78 million.
The networking company also boasted it has added one million more business customer locations to its growing Fiber network since first launching in 2012.
Last year, AT&T bought DirecTV for $49 billion, a move to give it more scale in video offerings.
For the full year 2016, AT&T management expects revenue growth in the double digits and adjusted earnings per share growth of at least the mid-single digits.
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The latest expansion extended AT&T’s USA fiber network another 76,000 route miles, bringing the total to almost 500,000 miles covered nationwide across 21 states now.
