Verizon delivered a better-than-expected first quarter as it added 260,000 retail postpaid connections, garnered telematics and Internet of things sales gains and added FiOS subscribers.
For the first quarter, Verizon reported earnings of $1.11 a share, up from 84 cents a share from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings in the quarter were $1.17 a share on revenue of $31.8 billion, up 6.6 percent from a year ago.
Wall Street analysts were expecting Verizon to report first quarter earnings of $1.11 a share on revenue of $31.24 billion.
While the quarter was strong, there were a bevy of moving parts. Verizon had a pre-tax charge of about $249 million to early debt retirement and about $107 million of acquisition and integration costs related to Oath (AOL and Yahoo). Verizon also funded its pension plans to the tune of $1 billion.
However, the real moving parts were in the business operations. Consider:
As for the outlook, Verizon said it sees revenue growth of low-single digit percentage rates. Earnings per share will grow at the same clip with capital spending of $17 billion to $17.8 billion. The capital spending view includes the launch of 5G services.