Reporting fourth-quarter earnings this morning, Verizon (VZ) posted revenue that jumped 9.9 percent to $27.09 billion and said it added 2.2 million mobile subscribers. Yet the company reported a loss of $653 million, or 23 cents a share for the quarter — mostly because of costs related to layoffs in the period. Quite a change from the profit of $1.24 billion, or 43 cents a share it reported in the quarter a year ago.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting earnings of 54 cents a share on $27.33 billion in revenue.
Revenues from Verizon’s wireline services declined 3.9 percent to $11.5 billion. But data revenue rose 31 percent, to $16 billion. And wireless data revenues accounted for 32 percent of all service revenues, up from 26.5 percent a year earlier.
“We were somewhat surprised by the continued level of economic pressures impacting our enterprise and wholesale markets,” Verizon CFO John Killian told analysts during an earnings call this morning.”We still face a very challenging environment.”
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