Verizon's second quarter earnings indicate that the company lost 41,000 pay TV subscribers and 13,000 broadband subscribers, something Verizon executives blame on striking union workers. Verizon had warned that its subscriber additions this quarter would be ugly due to the strike, with consumers either waiting until the strike was over to order service, or heading to a competitor for fear Verizon wouldn't be able to fulfill the order. The company then struggled with order backlog after unionized workers got back to work.
Still, Verizon saw a net income of $900 million on revenue of $30.53 billion for the quarter.
On wireless Verizon reported 615,000 retail postpaid net wireless additions for the quarter, though 356,000 of those were tablets all but given away on promotion by the telco. The company added 462,000 4G smartphones to its postpaid subscriber totals for the quarter, but saw only an 86,000 net phone additions thanks to a net decline in basic and 3G phones.
It's these shrinking fixed and mobile subscriber numbers that has Verizon looking to please investors via growth in other areas. As such the lion's share of the company's earnings call was dedicated to the telco's $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo, the latest puzzle piece in Verizon's attempt to shift from stodgy old telco to new millennial-focused media and advertising juggernaut.
“By acquiring Yahoo, we are scaling up to be a major competitor in mobile media," said Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam. "Yahoo is a complementary business to AOL, giving us market-leading content brands and a valuable portfolio of online properties and mobile applications that attract over 1 billion monthly active consumer views. We expect this acquisition to put us in a great position as a top global mobile media company and give us a significant source of revenue growth for the future.”
Verizon's full earnings report can be found
here.