T-Mobile continues to grow its customer base in the first quarter of 2024, with net customer growth of 1.2 million across its phone and internet businesses on the heels of two acquisitions, the company announced during its first quarter earnings call on Thursday. did.
The first acquisition was a long-awaited $1.35 billion deal to acquire prepaid carrier Mint Mobile, which the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved yesterday and began a year ago when T-Mobile announced The process was completed. The company yesterday entered into a joint venture with investment organization EQT to spend $950 million to acquire fiber-optic internet provider Lumos, giving 320,000 households on the East Coast of the United States access to its network with wired and Wi-Fi services. He also announced that he had done so.
read more: Best cell phone plans in 2024
The acquisition will increase T-Mobile's investment in two areas: prepaid phone contracts and wired internet, the latter of which the company previously sold largely to rivals Verizon and AT&T. So Verizon ended the first quarter with 7.2 million wired broadband subscribers, while AT&T ended the same period with more than 8.5 million. To keep up, T-Mobile will invest an additional $500 million between 2027 and 2028 to expand its Lumos network to 3.5 million total households by the end of the year, the company said in a blog post.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Siebert said in an earnings call that Lumos management's “years of experience building fiber with an efficient, cost-effective and targeted build model” praised. We're really excited to accelerate what Lumos is already doing. We will work to reach more households in the coming years. ”
This expansion paralleled traditional growth in categories where T-Mobile has traditionally been competitive, such as mobile. The company increased net postpaid customers by 532,000 (down just 6,000 from the first quarter of 2023). This is a metric used by the industry to demonstrate success and reliable returns. During the conference call, Jon Freier, president of T-Mobile Consumer Group, said people are using their phones longer, even though only about 2.4% of customers upgraded their devices this quarter. He pointed out that they keep the contract at the lowest price. T-Mobile's historical rates.
“We have customers who are staying for incredible rates, customers who are staying at record low rates, and customers who are staying just to buy free devices, so it really is the best of both worlds. It's like taking a ,” Friar said. “They stay for this differentiated value proposition, the network, and the overall experience.”
read more: Tale of Tints: My adventure in finding the right color iPhone 15 Pro Max
Mr. Siebert added that 75% of postpaid customers own 5G mobile phones, allowing them to experience the best services the network has to offer without having to upgrade. “So there's no incentive to replace your phone prematurely when you're having a great experience with your phone,” he says.
The company reported a decrease of 48,000 net prepaid customers (including phone and internet) in the quarter, an overall decrease of 74,000 compared to an increase of 26,000 in the same period last year. This is still lower than his 216,000 prepaid phone losses suffered by Verizon and his 132,000 prepaid phone losses suffered by AT&T.
Mr. Siebert acknowledged that the fixed wireless access base continues to grow by “attracting customers at nominal price points” despite ending promotions from the start of the service. T-Mobile's FWA customer count was 405,000, down from 523,000 in Q1 2023. T-Mobile ended the period with a total of 5.2 million customers for its Internet services.
T-Mobile reported revenue of $16.1 billion for the quarter, an increase of 4% year over year. This breaks down to him earning $2 per share, an increase of 27% compared to his $1.58 per share in Q1 2023.
T-Mobile stock fell slightly by 0.05% by the end of the day.
Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus are made of aluminum and look great
See all photos