American telecom service provider AT&T today said its Q1 2014 revenue rose 3.6 percent to $32.5 billion, while net income of $3.7 billion did not grow. There will be no change in its earlier planned Capex (capital spending) of $21 billion.
AT&T said Q1 2014 Capex was $5.8 billion.
Reflecting the acquisition of Leap Wireless, AT&T said its revenue growth for the current year will be 4 percent.
Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, said: “AT&T Next sales surpassed our expectations, and we had a tremendous surge in Mobile Share plans of 10 gigs or higher. We also had our best wireline consumer revenue growth since we first introduced U-verse in 2006 as our Project VIP build continues to make progress.”
AT&T said its wireless revenues rose 7 percent to $17.9 billion. Wireless service revenues increased 2.2 percent to $15.4 billion.
The company termed its AT&T Next plan was successful. AT&T Next was introduced to challenge offerings from T-Mobile US, Verizon and Sprint.
The company said mobile data billings rose 15 percent in Q1 2014.
Following the introduction of AT&T Next, Phone-only postpaid ARPU increased 0.4 percent versus the year-earlier quarter. Phone-only postpaid ARPU with AT&T Next monthly billings increased 2.0 percent. AT&T said high-margin tablets pressured postpaid service ARPUs.
Despite pressure from T-Mobile offerings, AT&T added more than 1 million subscribers. Wireless subscribers increased by 1,062,000, led by 625,000 postpaid net adds and 693,000 connected device net adds.
AT&T lost 50,000 prepaid subscribers, due to declines in session-based tablets, and 206,000 reseller subscribers, primarily due to losses in low-revenue 2G subscriber accounts.
AT&T added 1.1 million postpaid smartphones. 78 percent, or 53 million, of AT&T’s postpaid phone subscribers had smartphones, up from 72 percent, or 48.3 million, a year earlier. Smartphones accounted for 92 percent of postpaid phone sales.
AT&T’s ARPU for smartphones is about twice that of non-smartphone subscribers.
57 percent of AT&T’s postpaid smartphone customers used an LTE-capable device. The company sold 5.8 million smartphones.
AT&T said Q1 2014 wireline revenues dipped 0.4 percent to $14.6 billion.
Revenues from residential customers increased 4.3 percent to $5.7 billion.
U-verse subscribers (TV and high speed Internet) reached 11.3 million. U-verse TV added 201,000 subscribers to reach 5.7 million in service. U-verse high speed Internet had a net gain of 634,000 subscribers to reach 11 million.
Total wireline broadband ARPU rose 9 percent year over year.
About 60 percent of U-verse broadband subscribers have a plan delivering speeds of 12 Mbps or higher. 90 percent of new U-verse TV customers also signed up for U-verse high speed Internet.
AT&T said ARPU for U-verse triple-play customers continues to be more than $170.
