AT&T Profit, Revenue Up as Business Subscriptions Grow

AT&T reported a little more than $4 billion in profit for the fourth quarter of 2015, as well as a 22 percent increase in revenue, mostly from its $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV.

The telco reported a $4 billion loss for the same quarter in 2014. Revenue last quarter, despite totaling $42.1 billion, fell short of Wall Street forecasts.

For the full year, AT&T reported a whopping $13.3 billion in profit and almost $147 billion in consolidated revenue, compared to $6.4 billion and $132.4 billion for the previous year.{ad}

“We now have a unique set of capabilities that position us for growth and also give us a strategic advantage in providing consumers and businesses the integrated mobile, video and data solutions they want,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and CEO. “Our DIRECTV integration is going well, and the customer response to our new integrated mobile and entertainment offers is strong. Throughout this year, we plan to launch a variety of new video entertainment packages that give customers even more choices.”

AT&T reported 2.8 million wireless net adds and 1.6 million branded (postpaid and prepaid) net adds for the quarter. In addition, 4G LTE network coverage expanded to 355 million points of presence.

AT&T ended the fourth quarter with 73.7 million business wireless subscribers. It added 353,000 postpaid subscribers and 1.2 million connected devices during the quarter.

In business wireline, declines in legacy products and equipment revenues were offset by continued growth in strategic business services, the company said. Business wireline revenue totaled $8.1 billion, down nearly 4 percent year over year. Total wireline data revenue, which includes strategic business services, declined slightly. Data revenues now make up nearly three-fifths (59 percent) of Business Solutions wireline revenues.

Revenue from strategic business services, including VPNs, Ethernet, cloud, hosting, IP conferencing, voice over IP, MIS over Ethernet, U-verse and security services, grew 10.3 percent compared to the year-earlier quarter. These services represent an annual revenue stream of $11 billion.

During the quarter, the company also added 21,000 high-speed IP broadband business subscribers; however, total business broadband had a loss of 18,000 subscribers in the quarter.

AT&T ended the quarter with 55 million consumer mobility subscribers. It added 671,000 total subscribers in the quarter with 174,000 of those postpaid, 469,000 prepaid and another 50,000 reseller subscribers.