U.S. no.1 carrier Verizon has announced its Q3 2013 earnings, which shows increase in profit due to rise in the subscriber base.
Verizon announced its performance for Q3 2013 on Thursday, October 17 and confirmed that it has added more than 1.1 million new customers.
The carrier is one of the largest cellular networks by subscribers in the U.S. Previously, the company reported that the Q2 2013 profit was $7.1 billion. Earnings for the second quarter was 77 cents per share, on revenue of $30.28 billion, which increased more than 20 percent when compared to Q2 2012.
Wall Street expected that Verizon will report earnings of 74 cents a share and revenue of $30.16. However, the company confirmed earnings of $2.23 billion, or 78 cents per share, up from $1.59 billion, or 56 cents per share, in Q3 2012.
"These strong third-quarter results reflect Verizon's long-term investment in reliable, high-quality networks to deliver value to customers. Our unwavering focus on wireless, FiOS and strategic enterprise services has produced consistent performance, and we've delivered double-digit earnings growth in six of the past seven quarters. Verizon's strategic networks form a powerful distribution platform for future growth and innovation," said Lowell McAdam, Verizon chairman and CEO.
Out of the 1.1 million net connections in Q3 2013, 927,000 were connections that involved monthly service contracts. Verizon reported that as of September 30, the company has 101.2 million retail wireless connections, which represents a growth of 6 percent when compared to September 30, 2012.
Verizon said that its revenue in the wireless division rose 7 percent to $20.4 billion. The shift towards wireless devices such as smartphones and tablets has contributed to the increase in service revenue to $17.5 billion.
The carrier also accepted that it faced supply issues with the latest iPhones, which went up for sale in September this year, which resulted in some sales that would have occurred during September being pushed to October.
The company's new Edge program launched in late August this year, which enables customers to pay for their handset on an installment basis, did not pick up momentum until September, so the Edge program did not contribute significantly on the company's earnings in Q3 2013.
Verizon's shares saw an increase of $1.45, or 3 percent to $48.70 on October 18 morning trading.
