Verizon added 677,000 subscribers, made a $1.95 billion profit in Q1 2013 (updated)
Last quarter, Verizon gained a record high 2.1 million subscribers, but thanks to Hurricane Sandy and pension-related charges, suffered a $1.9 billion net loss. Now that the company is releasing its Q1 2013 figures, are we going to see some of those losses trimmed back? The latest jumble of spreadsheets says yes, revealing that Big V turned a profit of $1.95 billion whilst adding 677,000 new subscribers to its wireless service -- giving it a total customer base of 98.9 million users. In the quarter, Verizon activated 7.2 million smartphones, of which 5.9 million were LTE-ready devices. It added that 28 percent of those activations were customers who had defected from other carriers.
The company's wireline business saw 188,000 FiOS Internet and 169,000 FiOS Video customers, pushing that particular sector's revenue up to $2.6 billion -- 69 percent of Verizon's consumer revenue. Customers who are hoping to trade up from DSL should take heart that Big Red has switched over 83,000 homes to fiber this year, and plans to upgrade a further 217,000 dwellings before the end of 2013. CEO Lowell McAdam was his usual upbeat self, painting a rosy picture for the company's future without mentioning that other company that begins with V it's got to deal with.
Update: Verizon got in touch to clarify that while the company raked in $4.8 billion, a big chunk of that cash which is hived off and sent back to Vodafone, which owns a 45 percent stake in the business. The figures have been amended to reflect the net income attributable to Verizon.
