Verizon Communications Inc.’s
VZ 0.80%
fourth-quarter revenue inched up as the corporate changed income misplaced from its digital-media spinoff with new clients beneath pay-as-you-go wi-fi big TracFone.
Verizon, the most important cell community operator when it comes to subscribers, additionally added 558,000 postpaid cellphone connections within the December quarter, a determine that trailed progress of competing carriers. Rival
AT&T Inc.
T -0.42%
earlier this month reported preliminary outcomes exhibiting a internet acquire of 880,000 postpaid cellphone connections within the remaining three months of 2021, whereas
T-Cell US Inc.
added 844,000.
Cellphone carriers usually push clients towards postpaid agreements, which signify a dependable stream of income. Verizon counted a small proportion of its subscribers on pay as you go billing plans till the tip of final yr, when the corporate closed its buy of TracFone Wi-fi for $6.25 billion. Simply over one-fifth of Verizon’s client wi-fi retail connections have been pay as you go on the finish of December.
The acquisition additional consolidated a concentrated marketplace for mobile companies. It additionally helped stabilize income after the choice earlier in 2021 to promote most of AOL, Yahoo and different digital-media properties to private-equity agency
Apollo International Administration Inc.
for $4.25 billion. Verizon stored a ten% stake within the on-line unit.
For the present yr, Verizon forecast natural wi-fi service income progress of a minimum of 3%. The corporate mentioned its common capital spending this yr will vary between $16.5 billion and $17.5 billion. It plans to spend an extra $5 billion to $6 billion devoted to community upgrades supporting its C-band spectrum deployments, up from about $2.1 billion final yr.
AT&T and Verizon have confronted pushback from U.S. air-safety regulators in latest months as they broaden their fifth-generation networks to assist C-band alerts. Verizon has mentioned that momentary limits on C-band mobile alerts close to airport runways gained’t forestall it from protecting 100 million folks with the high-speed service by the tip of March.
Fourth-quarter internet earnings attributable to Verizon rose to $4.61 billion from $4.59 billion a yr earlier. On a per-share foundation, Verizon’s revenue stayed flat at $1.11.
Quarterly income slipped 1.8% to $34.07 billion, reflecting the divestiture of the media enterprise. Wi-fi-service income grew 6.5% to $17.76 billion.
Verizon mentioned its complete connections—a determine that features linked units like smartwatches and tablets however excludes cellphone service resold by companions like
Constitution Communications Inc.
and
Comcast Corp.
—ended the yr at 115.4 million. That tally mirrored roughly 20 million new TracFone clients.
Verizon shares rose 0.5% in premarket buying and selling.
Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Verizon added 558,000 postpaid cellphone connections within the December quarter. A earlier model of this text incorrectly mentioned it added 553,000. (Corrected on Jan. 25)
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