Verizon CEO: Phone customer losses will continue in Q3
“We are still going to have a negative net adds on phones in the third quarter,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said Wednesday at an investor event.
The news sent Verizon’s stock down by almost a full percentage point, to around $41.30 per share, in trading Wednesday.
Broadly, Vestberg’s situation at Verizon appears increasingly dire. The third quarter of 2022 will mark Verizon’s third full quarter of declines in the number of phone customers in its mobile business – a first in the company’s history. The losses also come amid some historic customer gains among Verizon’s rivals, AT&T and T-Mobile. Indeed, T-Mobile in July raised virtually all of its financial and customer expectations for 2022. Specifically, the operator now expects net postpaid customer additions of between 6 million and 6.3 million throughout 2022, an increase from its prior guidance of 5.3 million to 5.8 million.
Verizon, meantime, doesn’t expect to reverse its customer losses until the fourth quarter of 2022 at the earliest.
During his appearance Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2022 investor event, Vestberg sought to reassure investors that Verizon remains on the right course.
“We’re clearly the No. 1 in the market,” he said generally of Verizon’s position, noting though that he’s “not satisfied” with some of the company’s customer metrics. “We think we compete really good in a competitive market.”
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