T-Mobile[1] added 1.6 million net additions with 1.1 million postpaids during the third quarter. The wireless carrier, which is planning to merge with Sprint[2], said third quarter earnings[3] were $795 million, or 93 cents a share, on revenue of $10.8 billion, up 8 percent from a year ago.
Wall Street was looking for second quarter earnings of 85 cents a share on revenue of $11.3 billion.
T-Mobile's postpaid churn also came in at 1.02 percent, a record third-quarter low for the company.
We continue to drive our business beyond expectations and despite the work underway to close the merger, we delivered our best financials ever in Q3," said CEO John Legere, in prepared remarks. "Our customer growth accelerated again, benefiting from the investments we are making in network and in customer experience, leading to 22 quarters in a row with more than 1 million net customer additions."
By the numbers:
- The company ended the quarter with 77.2 million customers.
- Average revenue per user on a branded postpaid phone basis in the second quarter was $47.53, down 1.2 percent from a year ago.
- T-Mobile added 774,000 branded postpaid phone net additions.
- The company added 35,000 branded prepaid additions.
- Service revenue in the third quarter was $8.1 billion, up 6 percent.
- T-Mobile said it covers 324 million people with 4G LTE and is targeting 325 million by year end.
- For 2018, T-Mobile said it plans to add 3.8 million to 4.1 million branded postpaid net customers. Adjusted EBITDA will be between $11.8 billion and $12 billion, up from the company's previous range.
T-Mobile shares were up more than 3 percent after hours.
References
- ^ T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com)
- ^ to merge with Sprint