AT&T (T) exceeded market expectations for wireless subscriber additions in the second quarter on Wednesday, as the telecom operator’s higher-tier unlimited plans attracted customers.
Shares of the company rose 4% in premarket trading.
The company added 419,000 monthly bill-paying wireless phone subscribers, compared with expectations of 284,800 additions, according to five analysts polled by FactSet.
AT&T’s unlimited plans that are usually priced lower than those of rivals have helped the company add budget-conscious customers amid tough competition from T-Mobile (TMUS) and Verizon (VZ).
That has also helped AT&T retain customers better than rivals, with its postpaid phone churn- the number of people disconnecting from a company’s service – coming at 0.70%, the second lowest reported for a second quarter.
Free cash flow, a metric that helps determine dividend payouts, rose more than 9% to $4.6 billion, beating LSEG estimates of $4.22 billion.
However, slower phone upgrades in the U.S. weighed on AT&T’s revenue, mirroring comments from Verizon.
Mobility equipment revenue was down 8% in April-June period. Total revenue of $29.8 billion missed estimates of $29.92 billion, according to LSEG data.
AT&T, one of the largest telecom operators in US, was troubled by data breaches and hours long outages this year.
The US Federal Communications Commission said in a report on Monday the nationwide outage in February that lasted over 12 hours blocked more than 92 million voice calls and prevented more than 25,000 attempts to reach 911.
This could potentially result in a fine for the company.
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
