T-Mobile US expects to report 8.3 million net customer additions for 2015, bringing its total customer count to more than 63 million subscribers. During 2015, T-Mobile US overtook Sprint to become the nation’s third largest wireless carrier.
The “un-carrier” said during the final three months of 2015, it added 1.29 postpaid subscribers, 917,000 of which were handsets. Overall, T-Mobile US said it added 2.1 million net new customers in Q4, down slightly from Q3’s 2.3 million net additions.
T-Mobile US has been disrupting the wireless market for roughly two years with price cuts, device financing and free data. The past two years were very similar for T-Mobile US from a subscriber growth perspective; the company added 8.3 million customers each year, and 2.1 million customers during the fourth quarters of both years.
Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche of Wells Fargo Securities called Q4 2015 “another impressive quarter of subscriber growth for [T-Mobile US]. Our checks have suggested that total industry gross adds in Q4 were softer than Q4 2014, but [T-Mobile US] has been able to generate 1.29 million postpaid net adds (vs. 1.28 million a year ago) by mitigating customer churn, which is down 27 basis points year-on-year. The next question will be how these customer metrics translate into revenue and [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization].”
Wireless carriers often report subscriber additions when they announce quarterly earnings, but T-Mobile US chose to share its preliminary customer counts ahead of its fourth quarter earnings report. CEO John Legere touted the operator’s success by saying T-Mobile US added 23,000 customers per day for the last two years and has no plans to stop disrupting the market.
Legere said last week he expects T-Mobile US’ LTE coverage in 2016 to improve faster than that of its rivals, and he thinks his company will “walk away a winner” from the upcoming spectrum auctions.
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