14 DAY TRIAL // AT&T announced its financial results for 2008 and posted a net income 7.7 percent higher compared to the previous year. The carrier registered revenues of $124 billion, 4.3 percent up from 2007, and full year net income of $12.9 billion. At the same time, the company's consolidated revenues grew 3.4 percent over year. The 2008 adjusted operating expenses were $95.4 billion, up from the $91.3 billion a year before, while the net income was $16.7 billion compared to $17.0 billion in 2007.
Moreover, the company also announced a net income for the fourth quarter down to $2.4 billion from the $3.14 billion in the last quarter of the previous year. The operator had great success with its iPhone 3G, which was launched about half a year ago, and it registered a total of over 4.3 million iPhone activations during the second half of 2008.
“Despite the economic environment, we grew revenues in 2008, and I expect 2009 will be another year of overall revenue growth and solid progress for our company,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive officer.
“During the past year, we took major steps to improve AT&T's position for 2009 and beyond. The success of our iPhone 3G launch has driven wireless growth and helped redefine the wireless data space. Our AT&T U-verse TV service continues to ramp. We completed the world's largest deployment of the fastest Internet backbone technology across our U.S. network. We further expanded our industry-leading network capabilities and product sets for the business market.”
During the fourth quarter of 2008, the carrier added 2.1 million net subscribers and marked the end of the year with a total of 77 million customers. During the quarter, 1.9 million iPhones were activated, 40 percent of which were for customers new to AT&T. The company also announced a 3.9 percent growth in wireless postpaid subscriber ARPU. Postpaid data ARPU went up 35.7 percent on year and 10.9 percent sequentially.
Moreover, the carrier also announced that wireless data revenues went up 51.2 percent, which shows that wireless-integrated devices have seen a fast adoption rate, while wireless Internet access registered increased usage. AT&T announced that it expected the wireless margins to grow even more during this year.