AT&T today announced its revenue, ARPU, Capex, EBITDA, among others, for the third quarter of 2018.
AT&T’s revenue reached $45.7 billion — up $6.1 billion or 15 percent – including $7.2 billion from WarnerMedia and $0.9 billion impact of ASC 606 accounting change and USF policy election.
AT&T’s revenue includes $18.3 billion ($17.4 billion) from mobility, $11.8 billion ($12.5 billion) from entertainment and $7 billion ($7.3 billion) from wireline business.
AT&T has also shared the latest update on its 5G investment plans. AT&T said its fiber network covered 22 million units. AT&T Fiber’s target is to reach 14 million consumers by mid-2019 and 8 million business units.
AT&T will have 400 plus 5G Evolution cities in 2018 and LTE-LAA in 24 cities by the end of 2018.
AT&T will offer 5G mobile in 12 cities in 2018 and an additional 7 cities by 2019. AT&T has maintained Capex target of $22 billion for 2018.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said: “Our U.S. wireless business is growing and it’s the single biggest contributor to our earnings and cash flow.”
“We’re on track to get to the 2.5x debt-to-EBITDA range in 2019. We’re nearing our fiber build and making pricing moves on video. We’re laying the foundation for stabilizing our Entertainment Group profitability in 2019,” Randall Stephenson said.
AT&T’s Capex for Q3 2018 was $5.9 billion. Capital investment included $560 million in FirstNet capital costs and reflects no FirstNet reimbursements.
AT&T’s wireless revenues growth of 5.1 percent and service revenue growth of 2.3 percent was supported by pre-paid addition of 570,000, with 481,000 phones 171,000 post-paid smartphone additions. AT&T’s DIRECTV NOW added 49,000 new customers.
Operating expenses (Opex) of AT&T were $38.5 billion versus $33.9 billion in the year-ago quarter, primarily due to the Time Warner acquisition partially offset by the netting of USF and other regulatory fee revenues and the deferral of commissions.
AT&T has reduced its dependency on the phone business by buying media content through its $85-billion acquisition of Time Warner, but faces a battle to find growth as declines in one business offset growth in another, Reuters reported.
The second-largest U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers gained a net 69,000 phone subscribers in the United States who pay a monthly bill.
AT&T also lost 359,000 satellite television subscribers, versus 251,000 subscriber losses in the prior-year quarter, as viewers continue to cut pricey TV packages in favor of cheaper streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu.
