Verizon Q3 '09: FiOS leads the wireline way

Once again, Verizon's Q3 '09 earnings were a story of losses and gains. During the third quarter, Verizon's profit came out ahead of analyst expectations as profit only declined 'a less-than-expected' 9 percent. Company profit declined $2.89 billion, or 41 cents a share, from $3.2 billion, or 59 cents a share, in the same quarter in 2008. At the same time, Verizon saw its revenue jump 10.2 percent to $27.24 billion from $24.75 in Q3 2008.

Verizon reported that its third quarter wireline revenues were $11.6 billion, a 4.8 percent decrease over the same quarter in 2008. However, Verizon said in its earnings release that this is an improvement of 0.4 percentage points compared with the year-over-year revenue declines reported in the second quarter of 2009.

FiOS was the star of its wireline portfolio. During the third quarter, the telco reported that it added 198,000 new FiOS Internet customers and 191,000 net new FiOS TV customers, bringing it to a total of 3.3 million total FiOS Internet and 2.7 FiOS TV customers. Overall broadband connections at the end of Q3 '09 were 9.2 million, an 8.5 percent year-over-year increase. Verizon's broadband gains fell shy of Stifel Nicolaus financial analyst Chris King's expectation of 250,000 for the quarter.

Such a trend could suggest cable's ongoing efforts to increase their DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts in Verizon FiOS territories. "Certainly cable was a little more aggressive in the third quarter," King said in a Reuters article.

For more:
- see the Verizon release here [1]
- Reuters has this report [2]

Related articles
Verizon's FiOS and business services grow amid falling earnings [3]
FiOS: Verizon's shining wireline gem
[4]Verizon goes for the 'quad play' jugular
[5]Forget landline voice: I want data, video and wireless [6] [4]