Can T-Mobile Keep Pace With Verizon and AT&T?

Telecom & Wireless

Published: February 19, 2015 3:40 pm

Last Updated: April 27, 2020 6:29 pm

Source: courtesy of T-Mobile US Inc.

T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE: TMUS) reported its fourth-quarter financial results Thursday before the markets opened. It had $0.12 in earnings per share (EPS) on $8.2 billion in revenues, versus Thomson Reuters consensus estimates of $0.05 in EPS on $7.88 billion in revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2013, the company reported $0.04 in EPS on $6.83 billion in revenue.

The telecom industry has been very competitive recently, and T-Mobile has been one of the main instigators, looking to add to its market share and customer base through deep discounts. T-Mobile has effectively drawn away a fair number of customers who were displeased with the likes of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) is more or less in the same boat as T-Mobile, and it has followed a similar aggressive strategy.

One of the best metrics to analyze the growth within this industry is through net additions, which can also give some indication of market share as well.

T-Mobile had 2.1 million total net additions for the fourth quarter of 2014 and 8.3 million net additions for the full year. Of those totals, the company had 1.3 million branded postpaid net additions for the quarter and 4.9 million on the year.

Looking ahead to the coming year, T-Mobile has a target of 2.2 million to 3.2 million branded postpaid net customer additions.

Sprint posted nearly a million in net platform additions. This broke down into 30,000 postpaid net additions, 410,000 prepaid net additions and 527,000 wholesale net additions. At the end of the quarter, Sprint had 55.9 million total connections.

AT&T had 1.9 million in total net adds for the fourth quarter with 5.6 million net adds on the year. Postpaid net adds were 854,000 for the quarter and 3.3 million for the year.

Verizon added 2.1 million retail net connections, including 2.0 million retail postpaid connections in the fourth quarter.

Overall, T-Mobile is keeping pace with the AT&T and Verizon, which is incredibly good considering its size relative to those two giants.

Shares of T-Mobile were up 3% in the last hour of trading to $31.96. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $35.48 and a 52-week trading range of $24.26 to $35.50.

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