Earnings: AT&T Meets Expectations; Wireless Data Revenues Surge 52 Percent

AT&T ( NYSE: T) reported second quarter earnings today, meeting analyst expectations. The US's largest telecoms company reported net income of $3.8 billion, or 63 cents a share, on revenue of $30.9 billion. It reported adjusted earnings of 76 cents a share, right on the mark of a Thomson Financial survey of analysts. It missed analyst expectations, however, on revenue, which was forecast at $31.1 billion.

AT&T's wireless operation performed particularly well, helped no doubt by the surge in data usage that sent data revenues jumping 52 percent to $2.5 billion. Overall, the wireless division reported revenues of $12.0 billion, an increase of 15.8 percent from the same period a year ago. The company attributed the growth on "solid subscriber gains" and more customers opting for smartphones, which has in turn spurred an increase in data usage. In the second quarter, it added 1.3 million net wireless subscribers giving it a total of 72.9 million. Postpaid subscriber churn was down to a record 1.1 percent. AT&T had nothing but praise for the iPhone. It noted that customers who took smartphone devices such as the iPhone typically have ARPU's double the company average and increasingly expects more customers to migrate to these devices. It reported that in the first 12 days following launch, sales of the iPhone 3G were nearly double those of the original iPhone which debuted last summer.

Meanwhile, wireline IP data revenues grew 16.1 percent, which were driven in part by gains in its consumer video and broadband revenues. The company also reported that it had added 170,000 net subscribers to its U-verse TV service, giving it a total of 549,000 users. It said it expected to amass over 1 million subscribers in service by the end of the year.

Additional Highlights:

? Wireless internet access revenues more than doubled versus results for the year-earlier second quarter, while revenues from e-mail, messaging and data access all delivered greater than 50 percent growth.

? Text messaging volumes tripled compared to the same quarter a year ago, with multimedia message volumes jumping more than 170 percent.

? By the end of the second quarter, 18 percent of AT&T's postpaid wireless subscribers had an integrated device, up from 8 percent one year earlier. Its customers have 13 million 3G devices between them.

? Retail postpaid net adds totalled 894,000, down 2.0 percent versus the same period a year ago, though up 26.8 percent from results in the first quarter of this year. AT&T noted that this improvement came despite the reduced iPhone sales ahead of the early July iPhone 3G launch.

Earnings Release| Earnings Presentation (in PDF)| Conference Call