AT&T has just released its Q1 2013 earnings, which encompasses both its wireless and wireline businesses. Earnings for the quarter were generally strong, although they were counteracted by a fall in revenues in the wireline business. We're most interested in the wireless portion though, so we're going to focus on that. Here are the high points:
- $16.7 billion in total revenue, up 3.4-percent year-over-year
- $4.7 billion in operating income, up 4.1-percent y-o-y
- Wireless data revenues up 21-percent y-o-y
- 296,000 postpaid net customer additions
- Postpaid churn improved to 1.04-percent
- 1.2 million new smart phone subscribers
- Postpaid data ARPU up 18-percent
In nearly all metrics, AT&T is performing well on the wireless side of its business. The carrier added nearly 300,000 new customers, moved 1.2 million customers to smart phones, and says a full 72-percent of postpaid customers now own smart phones. AT&T sold a record 6 million smart phones in the quarter, which made up 88-percent of all postpaid phone sales. Data ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) shot up by 18-percent, and phone-only ARPU rose 2-percent.
Nearly 70-percent of AT&T's customers are now on usage-based (tiered data and Mobile Share) plans, which is up from 61-percent a year earlier. About 14-percent of AT&T's customers are now on Mobile Share plans, with an average of 3 devices per plan. About 25-percent of those Mobile Share plans are using 10GB of data or more per month, driving up data revenues.
On the network front, AT&T says it currently covers 200 million POPs with its LTE network, which is running ahead of schedule. By the end of 2013, it plans to reach 90-percent of its goal to have 300 million POPs covered. AT&T says 60-percent of its customers have a "4G" (aka HSPA+ or better) device, with over half of those being LTE devices.
Source: AT&T
