14 DAY TRIAL // Wireless carrier AT&T has announced today the financial results for the second quarter of the ongoing year and has posted revenues of $30.7 billion, with a net income of $3.2 billion. It also announced diluted earnings per share totaled $0.54, and $7.9 billion cash from operating activities. The company registered strong wireless growth (37.2 percent), with a large number of new postpaid subscriber additions and with robust growth in wireless data revenues.
“Our wireless momentum is excellent, operational execution and cost management continue to be strong, and in a challenging economy we delivered solid results,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive officer. “AT&T continues to invest and innovate in key areas that are transforming communications for customers. We announced a major initiative to deliver greater mobile broadband speeds, and that work is under way. We continue to expand our all-IP AT&T U-verse platform to deliver broadband to more homes.”
For the three-month period ended June 30, 2009, AT&T announced operating expenses of $25.2 billion, as well as operating income of $5.5 billion, along with operating income margin of 17.9 percent. Compared to the previous quarter of the ongoing year, the company saw better financial results: $30.9 billion vs $30.6 billion in revenues.
According to the company, the increased operating expenses in the second quarter of the year are attributed in part to the tremendous success that the newly launched iPhone 3GS had. The “robust iPhone demand drives strong recurring revenues and substantial long-term value,” the carrier states. Compared to last year's second quarter, as well as with the first quarter of 2009, the wireline operating expenses were stable (17.0 percent growth in wireline IP data revenues).
When it comes to the iPhone, the carrier said that it had activated more than 2.4 million iPhones in the quarter, and that the iPhone 3GS launch was a record-setting one. The company also announced registering a number of 1.2 million retail postpaid wireless net adds, which marks a growth of 29.0 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago and 31.8 percent sequentially. According to AT&T, this was the sixth consecutive quarter during which it registers a year-over-year increase in wireless postpaid subscriber ARPU, which went up by 2.3 percent, to $60.21.