Verizon Communications’ Q4 revenues increased 6.2% to a record $18.3 billion, driven by a 10th consecutive quarter of double-digit, year-over-year revenue increases for wireless services. Wireless contributed $27.7 billion to the corporation’s $71.3 billion total revenues in 2004. For the fourth quarter 2004, Verizon reported earnings of $3.0 billion, or $1.08 per diluted share, compared with a loss of $1.5 billion, or 53 cents per share, in the fourth quarter 2003. Some highlights for the quarter:
- Verizon Wireless contributed more than 40 percent of Verizon’s total revenues in the fourth quarter 2004, compared with less than 35 percent in the fourth quarter 2003. Wireless revenues were $7.3 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, a 22.7 percent increase compared with $6.0 billion in the fourth quarter 2003. Full-year 2004 wireless revenues were $27.7 billion, an increase of $5.2 billion, or 23.0 percent, compared with 2003.
- Overall, Verizon’s growth businesses — wireless, long-distance, broadband, data and Enterprise services — accounted for 55.2 percent of fourth-quarter 2004 revenues, compared with 49.3 percent of fourth-quarter 2003 revenues. Over the past year, revenues from these businesses have grown by 19.0 percent.
- Operating revenues for Domestic Telecom, the company’s U.S. wireline business segment, were $9.7 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, a 2.4 percent decrease compared with the fourth quarter 2003. For the year, wireline operating revenues were $38.6 billion, a 2.7 percent decrease compared with 2003.
- Verizon Wireless added 1.7 million net new customers, the largest quarterly customer increase in the history of the company. For the year, Verizon Wireless added 6.3 million net new customers, as its total number of customers grew 16.8 percent year-over-year to 43.8 million, including 41.8 million retail customers.
- Verizon added a net of 306,000 DSL lines in Q4 for a total of 3.6 million DSL lines in service, representing 1.2 million net additions over the past year — a growth rate of 53.5 percent. Revenues from DSL contributed to total wireline data revenues of $2.0 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, a 9.2 percent increase compared with $1.9 billion in data revenues in the fourth quarter 2003. For the year, data revenues of $7.8 billion grew 7.4 percent compared with 2003 and now represent more than 20 percent of total wireline revenues.
- Verizon’s FiOS fiber-optic-based broadband service currently has more than 20 percent market penetration in Keller, Texas, Verizon’s first market, after the first four and a half months of sales.
- Revenues from long-distance services, including regional toll services, were $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter 2004, a 5.8 percent increase compared with $1.0 billion in the fourth quarter 2003. On an annual basis, these revenues totaled $4.2 billion in 2004, a 10.4 percent increase compared with 2003.
- The company had 17.7 million long-distance lines in service as of year-end 2004, an increase of 342,000 lines from end of the third quarter 2004.
- Resale and Unbundled Network Element-Platform (UNE-P) lines totaled 6.6 million at the end of the fourth quarter 2004, up from 5.8 million at the end of the fourth quarter 2003 and down from 6.7 million at the end of the third quarter 2004. UNE-P lines decreased by 93,000 from the third to the fourth quarter in 2004. The company had 53.0 million switched wireline access lines in service as of year-end 2004.
- Enterprise revenues totaled approximately $6 billion in 2004, increasing 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter 2004 and 1.9 percent in the full year, compared with the same periods in 2003.
- Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions Group ended 2004 with more than 750 Enterprise Advance sales, meeting its year-end target of $250 million in Enterprise Advance revenues.
- Verizon’s total debt decreased $6.1 billion last year, to $39.3 billion at year-end 2004 from $45.4 billion at year-end 2003 — reaching a previously announced target of debt levels in relation to corporate earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
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