VZ Verizon Communications Inc

By Sarah Krouse 

Verizon Communications Inc.'s core wireless business lost lucrative phone customers in the first quarter, as it offered fewer promotions and focused on upgrading to a faster 5G network.

The carrier said it lost a net 44,000 postpaid phone connections during the period. Those losses were worse than some analysts expected and more severe than the same time last year, when it lost 24,000 postpaid phone connections. Verizon added a net 653,000 new postpaid phone connections during the fourth quarter of 2018.

Wells Fargo analysts said last week that they expected Verizon to lose 15,000 postpaid phone connections during the period because it had been less generous with promotions than some of its rivals.

The largest U.S. carrier by subscribers said it continued to build out its 5G network and earlier this month began offering 5G service in Chicago and Minneapolis. It has said it plans to roll out the service in 30 cities before the end of the year.

In all, net income attributable to Verizon was $5 billion, up about 11% from $4.5 billion a year earlier. Quarterly revenue ticked up about 1% to $32.1 billion.

The company is in the process of cutting $10 billion in costs by 2021 and said that it had trimmed $3 billion of that total so far, helped by a voluntary severance program and expense savings.

Wireless carriers globally are racing to upgrade their networks, hoping that the service's faster speeds, lower latency and ability to connect more devices will bring in fresh revenue and spur new applications across smart cities, health care and manufacturing.

Meanwhile, wireless companies in a crowded U.S. market are trying to sell additional connected devices and steal subscribers from each other.

Verizon had 117.9 million wireless connections at the end of March, down from 118 million at the end of 2018. It is the first major U.S. carrier to report quarterly earnings; rivals including AT&T Inc. will share their performance later this week.

Verizon said it added 261,000 connections for smartwatches and other connected devices, but lost 156,000 tablet connections.

Revenue within Verizon's media unit was $1.8 billion during the quarter, down 7.2% from a year ago. It said the business continued to suffer from declines in desktop advertising revenue, even as its mobile advertising revenue grew.

Verizon's landline business added 52,000 net new home broadband connections during the first quarter of 2019 and lost a net 53,000 Fios video customers. Fios has lost pay-television customers over the last two years as a result of cord-cutting and the growth of streaming services like Netflix Inc.

Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 23, 2019 08:41 ET (12:41 GMT)

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