Awaiting the iPhone, Verizon Reports Q4

With its impending launch of the vaunted iPhone in the wings, Verizon (NYSE:VZ, news, filings) still had to go through the motions and report their results for the fourth quarter of 2010.  Overall, a first look says their performance was roughly inline, though the pessimists amongst the media might see it as a hair below.  Overall revenues of $26.4B were down slightly from $27.1B last year, but earnings per share rose to $0.54 not including non-operational items.  

On the wireless front, Verizon added 955K net new customers, a number that analysts will be expecting to improve dramatically in 2011 as the iPhone comes online.  They now have 94.1M customers along with 8.1M ‘other connections’.   Revenues fell slightly sequentially to $16.1B.  Really though, who cares.  Verizon’s 2011 is all about what the iPhone will and will not mean to the company, right?

FIOS dominated the wireline results, with 197K net new customers for a total of 4.1M.  FIOS now generates 53% of the company’s consumer wireline revenues – I hadn’t realized it was that large now even following the Frontier deal.  In the enterprise segment, strategic enterprise revenues rose 7.5% from last year, now contributing 44% of total global enterprise revenue.   There was of course the ever-present landline losses, this quarter another 553K disappeared.  This time, though, FIOS and those strategic enterprise revenues were enough to stem the overall tide, and wireline revenues were flat at $10.29B.

All in all, nothing much happened here that we didn’t already know.  The economy continues to chug along, but nothing more than that – I don’t see any immediate red flags on that front.  No doubt AT&T will release a very similar report, except that they have the iPhone already and therefore will be on defense in 2011.

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Categories: Financials · ILECs, PTTs · Wireless