Verizon (NYSE:VZ) announced this morning that it widened its losses in the fourth quarter.
VZ posted earnings of $4.23 billion, or $1.48 a share, which was much lower than loss of $2.02 billion, or 71 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. The company did make a profit — of 38 cents per share — after some one-time adjustments, but that still fell short of views for 50 cents.
The company blamed the results on a variety of factors, including the impact of Hurricane Sandy, charges for pension liabilities and discounts on smartphones, such as for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) devices.
Despite all this, Verizon still showed traction with its mobile business. In Q4, the company added 2.1 million subscribers for a customer base of about 98.2 million, and also upped the pricing on data plans by about 6.6%.
The momentum was certainly a nice boost to revenues, which increased by nearly 6% to $30 billion, edging a consensus estimate was for $29.8 billion.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “How to Create the Next Facebook” and “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
