Earnings first look: AT&T maintains its strength

A first look at AT&T's earnings this morning (before the earnings conference call began) showed that perhaps we did not have to worry about big, old AT&T after all. Many industry analysts had been watching the telco's second quarter numbers for signs of weakness that might portend further weakness for the industry at large, but AT&T issued a report marked by an increase in net income, strong wireless performance and continued progress with U-verse and wireline IP efforts.

For the second quarter, the company's net income hit $3.8 billion, or $0.63 earnings per share, up 34 percent from the same quarter last year. Revenue reached $30.9 billion, an increase of 4.7 percent. Wireless data revenues were up 52 percent, and wireless postpaid subscriber churn came in at 1.1 percent, a quarterly record for AT&T. Wireline IP data revenues increased 16.1 percent. U-verse subscriber additions amounted to 179,000 for the quarter, giving AT&T a total U-verse subscriber tally of 549,000.

This is a quick first look at the earnings, and the conference call this morning should reveal more details about the quarterly performance, trends and AT&T's outlook. We'll follow up with further analysis as the week progresses.

For more:
- see these notes on the AT&T press release at MarketWatch

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