Verizon Communications earned $1.95 billion in the first quarter, or $0.68/share, an increase of more than 15% from the year-ago quarter. Total operating revenue was $29.4 billion, up 4.2% from the same quarter last year. Verizon Communications owns 55% of Verizon Wireless, the largest wireless carrier in the United States.
The company said total wireless revenue was $19.5 billion during the first quarter, up 6.8% year-on-year. The carrier added 720,000 net retail connections, of which 677,000 were postpaid customers, and ended the quarter with 98.9 million retail postpaid connections. As Verizon works to convert customers to its ShareEverything data plans, it has started to report average revenue per account (ARPA) rather than average revenue per user (ARPU). The carrier says average revenue per account during the first quarter was $150.27, up almost 7% from the year-ago quarter.
Verizon also reported strong growth in it FiOS broadband and pay-TV service, adding 188,000 net new FiOS connections during the quarter. FiOS revenue was $2.6 billion, up 15.1% from the year-ago quarter. The company says average revenue per user was above $150, but did not give a specific amount.
The company also noted that sales of strategic services to global enterprise customers increased 6% year-on-year and represented 55.6% of total enterprise revenue. Strategic services include Verizon Terremark cloud and data center services, security and IT solutions, advanced communications, and strategic networking.
“Verizon is firing on all cylinders. In an increasingly saturated market, the company is accelerating subscriber, revenue and profit growth. The ShareEverything plan is being received enthusiastically by consumers. FiOS continues to make inroads in the internet and video markets taking away share from the cable companies,” said Roger Entner, lead analyst and founder of Recon Analytics.
Verizon of course needs spectrum to continue its growth. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon is trying to buy spectrum from Clearwire.
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