T-Mobile continued to show explosive growth, as the wireless company on Wednesday posted a net profit of $297 million, or 34 cents per share on $8.2 billion in revenues. During its fiscal fourth quarter of 2015, T-Mobile reported net earnings nearly tripled the $101 million, or 12 cents a share, in the same period a year ago.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg expected on average a profit of 18 cents a share. For the full year, T-Mobile reported a $733 million profit. In pre-market trading, shares of T-Mobile were up 6 percent to $38.88.
Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile had already announced last month that it added 2.1 million customers in the quarter. The company’s growth in the quarter included 1.3 million branded postpaid customers, a key measure of a wireless carrier’s health.
The quarterly revenue marked a 1 percent increase from the fourth quarter in 2014. Revenue for the full year totaled $32 billion, up 8.4 percent from the $29.5 billion in the year-ago quarter.
T-Mobile said in the report that managers expect to add between 2.4 million to 3.4 million new subscribers in fiscal 2016. According to Bloomberg, analysts expect 3.2 million.
John Legere appears to be the man with the answers. Since he was hired as T-Mobile’s chief in 2012, he has led the company on a remarkable run, with the help of his “un-carrier” strategy. This is the sixth consecutive quarter that T-Mobile has added more than 1 million customers. Part of the Legere and T-Mobile’s success is based on offering good service for lower prices than Verizon, AT&T and other competitors. Another part is being more innovative.
One example of that is the Binge On offer. This allows users to use Web sites from a select group of T-Mobile partners, including Netflix. Visits to these sites does not count against the customer’s data allotment. But T-Mobile has a fight coming over Binge On. Critics say because Binge On favors some service providers over others, it violates Net Neutrality laws.
