AT&T reported a slight increase in revenue and a smaller net loss for the fourth quarter, helped along largely by smartphone and broadband sales
The telecom giant on Thursday reported $32.6 billion in revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31, up 0.2% from the same quarter in 2011. AT&T's net loss for the quarter was $3.9 billion, a 42% improvement from the $6.7 billion net loss a year earlier.
Revenue would have been up 2.8% when excluding past revenue from the company's sold advertising unit.
Earlier this month, AT&T reported a record quarter for smartphone sales, with 10.2 million of the devices sold. Its previous record of 9.4 million came in the fourth quarter of 2011. AT&T set records for both iPhone and Android smartphone sales, the company said.
AT&T delivered "solid financial results" during the quarter and the full year, Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chairman and CEO, said in a conference call. During 2013, AT&T will aggressively roll out its Project VIP effort to improve its wired and wireless networks and retire old telephone infrastructure, he said.
AT&T reported the results during the same week that there were reports of outages in its U-verse broadband service.
Excluding one-time expenses amounting to $1.10 per share, AT&T reported earnings per share for the quarter of $0.44, missing analyst expectations of $0.46. One-time items, totalling $10 billion, included benefits and Sandy storm costs.
For the full year, AT&T reported $127.4 billion in revenue, up 0.6% from 2011. Net income for 2012 was $7.3 billion, up 84.2% from 2011.
AT&T's mobile revenue for the fourth quarter was $17.6 billion, up 5.7% from a year ago. The company added 1.1 million mobile customers during the quarter, giving it 107 million. Smartphones made up 89% of postpaid phone sales during the quarter, the company said.
The company sold 8.6 million iPhones during the quarter, with 16% of those customers new to AT&T.
AT&T's wireline revenue was $14.9 billion during the fourth quarter, down 0.5% from 2011. The company's U-verse television service added 192,000 subscribers, with TV customers now totalling 4.5 million. The company added 609,000 U-verse broadband customers, reaching 7.7 million, although total broadband subscriber growth, including DSL losses, was flat.
