Key Takeaways
- AT&T added 419,000 new monthly postpaid customers, more than analysts projected.
- The company missed expectations slightly on earnings and revenue.
- The FCC on Monday released a report faulting AT&T for a network outage in February.
AT&T (T) shares rose Wednesday after the company reported second quarter results buoyed by more new subscribers than analysts expected.
The telecommunications titan reported 419,000 new postpaid subscribers, well above the 251,800 expected by analysts, according to Visible Alpha. Customer churn was just 0.7%, also beating expectations. AT&T posted diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.49 on revenue of $29.8 billion, missing expectations of $0.52 per share on revenue of $30.01 billion.
The company also reiterated previous full guidance for earnings per share, pointing investors to a range of $2.15 to $2.25 for adjusted earnings.
Shares of AT&T were up about 4% in recent trading. The advance made the stock a rare gainer in the S&P 500’s communications service sector, which was weighed down by the falling shares of Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) and Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META), among others.
Network Issues
On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission released a report on a February AT&T outage that lasted more than 12 hours and blocked more than 92 million voice calls.
The commission blamed an AT&T Mobility network change the morning of Feb, 24. An equipment configuration error caused the network to enter “protect mode,” which disconnected all devices from the network and cut off voice and 5G data service for wireless users, the report said.
AT&T admitted earlier this month that call and text records from “nearly all” its cellular customers were compromised in a massive data breach in April.