AT&T Revenue Up, Mostly From DirecTV Acquisition

AT&T’s revenue jumped in the third quarter mostly thanks to its $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV, approved this past summer by the FCC.

Consolidated revenue totaled $39.1 billion, up nearly 19 percent from the same quarter in 2014. Operating income was $5.9 billion compared to $5.6 billion, while the operating income margin was 15.2 percent, down from 17 percent in last year’s third quarter.

“With our national wireless and video capabilities, as well as our extensive broadband network, we now have assets that make us a unique competitor and the first scaled, fully integrated U.S. service provider,” touted Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and CEO.

Profit for the quarter was $3 billion, down slightly from $3.1 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Of particular note to partners, AT&T reported a 1.2 percent year-over-year increase in Business Solutions revenue, including growth in wireline-business data revenue for the fourth consecutive quarter, and strategic business-services revenues of $2.8 billion, up 12.6 percent.

During the quarter, AT&T saw: 26,000 domestic DirecTV net adds, 192,000 IP broadband net adds, and 2.5 million AT&T Mobility domestic wireless net adds in every customer category. Net adds include the number of new customers minus those who dropped the service.

AT&T also added nearly 1 million branded (postpaid and prepaid) smartphones, and continued growth in phone-only postpaid average revenue per user plus AT&T Next monthly billings was up nearly 5 percent year over year.

The carrier’s earnings report comes just two days after Verizon reported quarterly gains in revenue and profit. One item of note from Verizon’s conference call: Comcast is moving closer to entering the cellphone business. Re/Code reported that Comcast has notified Verizon that it intends to exercise its option to resell cellular service using the carrier’s network. Comcast and several other cable operators got the option as part of a spectrum deal with the wireless giant.