AT&T (NYSE: T) reported $33 billion in consolidated revenue for the third quarter, up 2.5 percent year-to-year but missing investor forecasts by about $240 million.
Third quarter net income was $3 billion, down from $3.8 billion for the same period in 2013.
The conglomerate enjoyed a respectable quarter on the wireline side, thanks to its U-verse products. U-verse TV subscribers spiked at 216,000 in Q2, and U-verse high-speed Internet customers increased by 601,000. With these respective subscriber bases passing 6 million and 12 million customers, U-verse revenue for the quarter was up 23.8 percent.
Despite the solid U-verse performance, total Q3 wireline revenue for AT&T was slowed by legacy consumer and business services losses and totalled only $14.6 billion, down 0.4 percent year-over-year.
Here are some wireline highlights for AT&T:
Video services: AT&T continued to have the highest growth of any major pay-TV operator, and now totals 6.1 million video subs before closing its proposed merger with DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV). Nearly 97 percent of those subs bundle TV services with another product like Internet service. ARPU for U-verse triple-play customers continues to exceed $170 a month. The company added 240,000 U-verse TV subscribers in Q3 last year, its highest total in five years.
Broadband: U-verse broadband now reaches 12.1 million customers. However, AT&T only added 38,000 Internet customers overall, with many subscribers dropping legacy DSL services. The total U-verse broadband subsriber base now represents 73 percent of the company's overall wireline cusotmer footprint, compared to just 59 percent in Q3 2013.
For more:
- read this AT&T earnings release
Earnings roundup: Sizing up pay TV earnings for the third quarter of 2014
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AT&T's growing U-verse now controls 62% of company's consumer wireline business