AT&T's Fourth-Quarter Results Dragged Down by TV Business
January 29 2020 - 8:28AM
Dow Jones News
By Drew FitzGerald
AT&T Inc.'s pay-television business continued to hemorrhage
customers, adding to pressure as the company readies its own
entrant into the increasingly crowded video streaming market.
The Dallas company lost 945,000 satellite and fiber-optic TV
subscribers during the last three months of 2019, while its online
channel bundle AT&T TV Now shed 219,000 customers.
AT&T vaulted to the top of the pay-TV rankings in 2015 when
it bought DirecTV, but that business lost about 4 million
subscribers over the past year as many turned to more flexible and
less expensive entertainment options.
The company ended 2019 with 20.4 million domestic pay-TV
subscribers, dropping behind cable giant Comcast Corp.'s 21.2
million video customers.
AT&T's core mobile phone business fared better, adding
229,000 postpaid phone subscribers while losing 20,000 prepaid
phone customers in the fourth quarter. Postpaid customers billed
for service at the end of the month are considered lucrative for
carriers because they are less likely to switch providers.
AT&T ended the year with more than 93 million domestic
wireless connections, excluding connected devices such as tablets
and lines sold through resellers.
The company's overall fourth-quarter profit hit $2.39 billion,
or 33 cents a share, down from $4.86 billion, or 66 cents a share,
over the same period a year earlier. Total fourth-quarter revenue
fell to $46.82 billion.
Shares of AT&T slipped about 1% in premarket trading. The
shares have rallied over the past year as the company has promised
to pay down debt levels and streamline its operations.
Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 29, 2020 08:13 ET (13:13 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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