T-Mobile continued its industry-leading growth in the third quarter, adding 2.3 million customers to bring its total to more than 61.2 million customers. The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless company also posted a quarterly profit of $136 million, up from a $93 million loss a year ago, on revenues of $7.85 billion, an increase from $7.35 billion a year ago.
The growth included 843,000 new branded postpaid phone customers, which is ahead of larger carriers Verizon and AT&T. Analysts and investors look at postpaid growth as a key way to determine a carrier’s health. These customers, who pay at the end of a billing period, typically have better credit than their prepaid peers and are considered more valuable.
The company, however, fell short of Wall Street expectations in both revenue and profit. Analysts polled in advance by Thomson Reuters expected revenue of $8.29 billion and earnings of 30 cents a share. Part of the reason was ongoing costs related to decommissioning the MetroPCS network that the company acquired in 2013.
The company’s shares are up more than 2 percent in early trading. T-Mobile, which rang the opening bell on the NASDAQ this morning, said in its earnings report that it expects to remain profitable.
“We’ve had 10 quarters in a row with over 1 million net new customers, 5 with over a million branded postpaid customers and a total of 2.3 million new customers this quarter alone,” said T-Mobile CEO John Legere in a statement. “Our momentum is strong and our incredible customer growth is translating directly into solid financial growth which makes it crystal clear that putting customers first is just good business.”
The news follows another public stunt by Legere & Co., who commissioned a skywriter to put a message over Verizon’s headquarters yesterday about the larger carrier’s pricing practices.
Can you see us now @Verizon? Good. #AbolishOverages pic.twitter.com/VIdH9OyOUE
— T-Mobile? (@TMobile) October 26, 2015
Verizon and one of its top communications execs jabbed back at T-Mobile’s network performance.
That time you found yet another form of communicating more reliable than the TMobile network. #SmokeSignals #Skywriting #PonyExpress
— Jeffrey Nelson (@JNels) October 26, 2015
We get it, sometimes messages are unclear when you're not on America's
best, most reliable 4G LTE network. pic.twitter.com/5NR7f8CeBt— Verizon (@verizon) October 26, 2015
T-Mobile’s company’s earnings conference call starts at 7 a.m. Pacific and can be streamed here.