AT&T reported Q2 2019 consolidated revenues of $45.0 billion and adjusted EPS of $0.89 compared to $0.91 in the year-ago quarter. The company raised its free cash flow guidance to $28 billion range and reaffirmed its financial guidance for the rest of the year.
Declines in revenues from legacy wireline services, Vrio, domestic video and wireless equipment were more than offset by the addition of WarnerMedia and growth in domestic wireless services, strategic and managed business services, IP broadband and Xandr.
Net debt has been reduced by $18 billion over the past 12 months and now stands at about $150 billion.
AT&T says it is on track for nationwide 5G coverage by mid-2020.
“We’re halfway through the year and on track to deliver on all our 2019 priorities,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “We continue to pay down debt and are more confident than ever that we’ll meet our yearend deleveraging goal, and we’ll take a look at buying back stock. Our FirstNet build is not only running ahead of schedule – it’s become a driver of our wireless network leadership in speed, reliability and network performance. It also sets us up to have nationwide commercially available 5G coverage in the first half of 2020.”
Highlights:
- In Mobility, service revenues were up 2.4%. There were 355,000 phone net adds, including 144,000 postpaid smartphone net adds and 72,000 postpaid phone net adds. There were 341,000 prepaid net adds of which 283,000 were phones.
- For the Entertainment Group, there was a 2.6% operating income growth with solid video and broadband ARPU gains. AT&T now has 21.6 million premium TV subscribers, with a 778,000 net loss during the quarter. There are now 1.3 million DIRECTV NOW subscribers, with a 168,000 net loss in Q2. AT&T TV, company’s new thin client video service, is expected to begin trials in the third quarter.
- IP broadband revenue growth was 6.5% with 318,000 AT&T Fiber gains. AT&T now has nearly 14 million customer locations passed with fiber, and 22 million when business locations are included.