Citing growth in wireless, long-distance and broadband services, Verizon reported Q3 revenue of $18.206 billion, up 6.7% over the same period last year. Q3 earnings were $1.8 billion — 64 cents per diluted share, or 65 cents per share before one special item. For the first time, Verizon Wireless contributed more than 40 percent of Verizon’s total revenues. Some highlights for Q3:
- Verizon Wireless: added 1.7 million net new customers, the largest quarterly customer increase in the history of the company, which was formed in April 2000. The total number of customers grew 16.9 percent year-over-year to 42.1 million, including 40.2 million retail customers. Average monthly churn was 1.5%. Average monthly service revenue per customer increased 3.1 percent year-over-year to $51.58. Data services usage continued to climb, contributing $300 million, or 4.7 percent, of third-quarter 2004 total service revenues, up from 4.2 percent in the second quarter 2004 and 2.3 percent in the third quarter of 2003. More than one-third of the company’s base — 14.6 million customers — use data services and spend an average of $7 per month on data. During Q3, Verizon Wireless logged 2.6 billion text messages, 25.5 million picture messages and 26.8 million Get It Now downloads.
- Long Distance: revenues for all LD services, including traditional intra-region toll services, increased 8.7 percent compared with third quarter 2003, to $1.1 billion in the quarter. The company had 17.3 million long-distance lines in service as of the end of the quarter, an increase of 525,000 lines compared with the second quarter 2004.
- DSL: added a net of 309,000 DSL lines for a total of 3.3 million lines in service, representing 1.1 million net additions over the past year. The company also began rolling out FiOS fiber-optic-based services in the third quarter 2004.
- Data: Revenues (including DSL) were $2.0 billion. Data revenues represented 21 percent of Domestic Telecom’s total operating revenues in the quarter, up from 18 percent in the third quarter 2003.
- Bundles: Approximately 53 percent of Verizon residential customers have purchased local services in combination with either Verizon long-distance or Verizon DSL, or both. This compares with 41 percent in the third quarter 2003. The average revenue per month per Verizon residential wireline customer increased by 4.4 percent in the third quarter 2004, compared with the third quarter 2003.
- UNE-P: Resale and Unbundled Network Element-Platform (UNE-P) lines totaled 6.7 million at the end of the third quarter 2004, up from 5.4 million at the end of the third quarter 2003. For UNE-P only, this is a 105,000 increase from the end of the second quarter 2004, which is significantly less than in prior quarters this year. The company had 53.7 million switched wireline access lines in service as of the end of the third quarter 2004.
- Employees: 208,240 compared to 219,927 at the same time last year.
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