AT&T says that its DirecTV Now streaming service attracted more than 200,000 customers in Q4 — which helped to offset a loss of 27,000 traditional pay TV customers at DirecTV and U-verse.
The telco’s overall results were pretty much as expected. It generated $2.44 billion in net income in quarterly earnings reported today, down 39.2% vs the period last year, on revenues of $41.84 billion, down 0.7%.
The top line was a little shy of the $42.04 billion analysts expected. Adjusted earnings at 66 cents a share hit Wall Street’s target. AT&T shares were up less than 1% in post-market trading.
The DirecTV Now launch was part of “a transformational year” for the company, which has agreed to pay $85 billion for Time Warner, CEO Randall Stephenson says.
He adds that its “5G evolution plans and improved spectrum position are paving the way for the next-generation of super-fast mobile and fixed networks. And we shook-up the industry with our landscape-changing deal to acquire Time Warner, the logical next step in our strategy to bring together world-class content with best-in-class distribution which will drive innovation and more choice for consumers.”
The company predicts that consolidated revenues will grow by a low single-digit percentage this year with adjusted EPS up “in the mid-single digit range.”
At the Entertainment Group, DirecTV added 235,000 subscribers, bringing its total video customers to 21.0 million. But that was offset by U-verse’s 262,000 loss, for a total of 4.3 million.