AT&T gave a glimpse into its fourth quarter figures in an 8-K filing this week, reporting better-than-expected numbers for both wireless and video net additions.
The carrier said it pulled in a total of 900,000 domestic branded wireless net additions, including around 500,000 postpaid and 400,000 prepaid. AT&T also noted it closed the quarter with more than 330,000 branded net phone additions, but did not break pre and postpaid out of that number.
The company reported an additional 1.2 million wireless net additions in Mexico, as well as more than 200,000 video net adds, the latter of which it said were “entirely driven by DirecTV Now.” The video net addition figure includes only paying customers, the carrier reported.
According to Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche, AT&T’s preview numbers are above expectations across the board. Fritzsche noted Wells Fargo had predicted 650,000 domestic branded wireless net adds, with 350,000 postpaid and 300,000 prepaid in that number. The firm also forecast just 25,000 net video adds for the carrier.
While Wells Fargo still expects AT&T to come up negative on postpaid phone net additions (with 220,000 in losses), Fritzsche said the report is a good sign.
“We view T’s select subscriber disclose as a net positive as preliminary results beat our estimates for wireless and video,” she wrote in a Friday note. “While T did not break out postpay phone results specifically, we are encouraged by total postpay and postpay subscriber beat. Video adds of 200K is a solid headline number, though T noted it was entirely driven by DTV Now adds, which we hadn’t accounted for in our 25K estimate.”
AT&T’s preview comes two weeks after rival T-Mobile dropped its own preliminary results at CES earlier this month. The Un-carrier said it pulled in a whopping 2.1 million total net additions, including 1.2 million postpaid net additions, 933,000 postpaid phone net additions, and 541,000 branded prepaid net additions. More on what to expect from T-Mobile’s fourth quarter can be found here.
In its filing, AT&T also reported on its 2G network shutdown.
The carrier said it closed the fourth quarter with 700,000 2G deactivations, including 50,000 postpaid in that figure. As of December 31, AT&T indicated it had approximately 2.3 million (100,000 of which were postpaid) remaining total 2G subscribers, but noted it has since “discontinued service on virtually all of our 2G cell sites.”
AT&T also said it is expecting to record a pre-tax loss of around $1 billion in the fourth quarter due to the annual remeasurement of its pension and postemployment benefit plans.
