AT&T beats on revenue, adds more wireless and fiber customers, will see big savings from tax bill
AT&T posted solid second-quarter earnings, beating estimates, and plans to use $6.5 billion to $8 billion in tax savings from President Trump’s tax bill to build out its fiber business. However, the stock is slumping in premarket trading, as the company’s full-year profit guidance failed to impress.
The company posted $30.8 billion in revenue, up 3.5% year on year, beating estimates of $30.4 billion on higher wireless and consumer sales. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.54, beating FactSet analysts’ expectations of $0.53.
Net income for Q2 was $4.9 billion, up from $3.9 billion from the same period in the year prior.
The company saw 401,000 postpaid phone net additions (new monthly subscriptions, minus lost customers) for the quarter.
Mobility service revenue was $16.9 billion, up 3.5% year on year, while consumer fiber broadband revenues were up 18.9% from Q2 2024 to $2.1 billion. The company added 243,000 new fiber subscribers.
AT&T Chairman and CEO John Stankey said in the earnings release:
“We are winning in a highly competitive marketplace, with the nation’s largest wireless and fiber networks.”
Guidance for the full year calls for adjusted earnings per share of between $1.97 and $2.07, and capital expenditures between $22 billion and $25 billion. That profit estimate may be the fly in the ointment here: even the high end of that range is below the consensus estimate of $2.09, per analysts polled by Bloomberg.
The company also said it’s expecting “low double-digit” declines in business wireless EBITDA.
The company said it expects to see $6.5 billion to $8 billion of cash tax savings between 2025 and 2027, thanks to Trump’s tax bill that was just signed into law. Of those savings, $3.5 billion will go into accelerating its fiber internet network, and the company expects to reach 60 million fiber customers when including the Lumen Technologies customers it agreed to acquire.
