Verizon's growth plans include investment in its B2B unit.
Verizon added 357,000 wireless postpaid consumer connections in the fourth quarter and another 346,000 for business as the company's results were better than expected.
The wireless giant reported fourth quarter earnings of $1.11 a share on revenue of $34.7 billion, down 0.2% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $1.21 a share.
Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP fourth quarter earnings of $1.17 a share on revenue of $34.43 billion.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said 5G is expanding beyond mobile use cases and the company aims to "create new opportunities for growth across multiple industries." Verizon missed its consumer postpaid phone subscriber total, but 5G connections are going to be about more than just smartphones. In addition, edge computing and IoT deployments will also minimize the importance of phone additions over time.
The company noted that it will continue to invest in Verizon Business. In 2020, Verizon announced the BlueJeans purchase in and followed up with encryption improvements and features for virtual events.
Vestberg said:
You can see also that Verizon Business Group has a year of investments to see that we are putting a foundation to be even stronger for the future, had good growth in the wireless and also in some areas like the public sector, very good performance and also adding a lot of new customers on the enterprise side.
We have other segments we are addressing as well as the next-generation business-to-business application based on our unique mobile edge compute offering that we have with Amazon, also now with Microsoft and many other partners. And finally, the network monetization with our MVNO partners, which are enjoying the best network that we have and we're building.
For 2020, Verizon reported earnings of $4.30 a share on revenue of $128.3 billion, down 2.7% from a year ago.
Among the key items:
As for the outlook, Verizon is projecting non-GAAP 2021 earnings of $5 a share to $5.15 a share.