Verizon has beat Wall Street expectations in its third quarter financial results, adding more than 1.1 million new customers to its wireless service in the period. Overall Verizon revenues of $30.3 billion marks a year-on-year increase of 4.4 percent, with the wireless business increasing its contribution to the total to $20.4 billion, up by 7.2 percent compared to last year.
In the period, Verizon managed to sell 7.6 million smartphones, and activated 10.2 million devices in total for the quarter. Approximately 51 percent of activations consisted of iPhones, placing the number somewhere around 3.9 million. This is a marginal increase compared to the 3.1 million activations in Q3 2012, which at first could suggest that the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c had not much of an impact on sales, but it could possibly be down to sales of older iPhone models slowing in anticipation of the late-in-the-quarter launch.
Verizon’s current plan to purchase Vodafone’s 45-percent stake in the wireless company is also brought up in the results, but more as a comment for what will affect the company in the future. The $49 billion debt offering and arrangement for up to $12 billion in term loans is mentioned, with the 2 cent earnings per share from wireless spectrum sales offsetting the 1 cent per share loss relating to “incremental interest expenses” relating to the purchase plan.
Its wireline business also saw increases, though not to the same levels as the wireless results. Revenues were $3.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4.3 percent, with 173,000 new FiOS Internet accounts and 135,000 FiOS Video accounts making the overall customer totals 5.9 million and 5.2 million respectively. At the end of the quarter, more than 40 percent of Internet customers were on FiOS Quantum, while broadband customers increased 56,000 in the quarter to nearly 9 million.
Overall, Verizon achieved a profit of $2.23 billion, up from the $1.59 billion earned in the quarter last year.
