Verizon shares tank after Q4 revenue misses estimates

Verizon Communications (VZ) posted its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings before trading hours on Tuesday, Jan. 29. Total consolidated operating revenues fell 1% in the fourth quarter to $34.3 billion, narrowly missing the Street view. This quickly sent the shares down following the announcement.

Net income fell a whopping 89% to $2.1 billion. Net attributable income sunk 90% to $1.9 billion or $0.47 per diluted share. A goodwill impairment impact of $4.59 billion regarding Oath affected the bottom line in the quarter.

Read the earnings conference transcript here.

In the quarter, Verizon added 1.2 million retail postpaid wireless connections — 653,000 phone net additions and 873,000 postpaid smartphone net additions.

With a retail postpaid churn rate of 1.08% and retail postpaid phone churn rate of 0.82%, wireless service revenue grew 1.9%.

In Wireline, there were 54,000 Fios Internet net additions. Fios total revenue grew 2.9% year over year.

It was also during the reported quarter that the telecom giant launched its new offering — the world’s first commercial 5G broadband internet service, in some markets. The Verizon 5G Home was first offered to some parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.

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