Although Verizon saw positive growth in its consumer broadband and strategic business services segment, the ILEC saw a 21 percent decrease in earnings along with $416 million in severance and pension costs.
During the quarter, Verizon reported income of $1.48 billion, or 52 cents a share, down from $1.88 billion, or 66 cents a share, from the Q2 2008. Putting aside merger and other associated one-time labor costs, Verizon's per-share earnings decreased by 4 cents to 63 cents per share. At the same time, the ILEC saw an 11 percent increase in revenue to $26.86 billion.
Despite the initial negative outlook, Verizon did see continued growth in its consumer broadband and business market segments. Buoyed by new contracts with large enterprises (The Bank of New York Mellon) and government agencies (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) Verizon pointed that business services saw a relative uptick, rising 3 percent during the second quarter.
Verizon's bet on Fiber-to-the-Home continues to pay off as the ILEC added 300,000 net TV customers and 303,000 Internet subscribers during the quarter. Verizon now has 2.5 million TV and 3.1 million Internet subscribers, respectively. Overall broadband connections in the second quarter totaled 9.1 million, and increase of 186,000 subscribers from Q1 2009. Included in this outlook is the loss of 117,000 DSL connections from the first quarter, but the ILEC claims that number was more than offset by the 303,000 subscription increase for FiOS Internet.
For more:
- Here's the official release
- Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones has this article
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