AT&T announces strong Q4 and full year 2025 earnings with Verizon and T-Mobile next to report
AT&T released its quarterly and full year earnings leading to a huge increase in the carrier's shares.
AT&T released its final quarterly report of 2025 today along with its results for the full year of 2026. During the fourth quarter, AT&T failed to meet Wall Street estimates for the most important financial result-net postpaid phone adds. The pocket protector wearing pencil pushers known as analysts expected the carrier to report 425,000 additions to that category. Today, AT&T reported that it actually had 421,000 net postpaid phone additions or 4,000 fewer than the consensus estimate.
Why postpaid phone subscribers are the most important customers a carrier has
Postpaid phone subscribers are the most stable customers that a wireless carrier has. Despite having the highest monthly payments, most postpaid phone subscribers aren't constantly leaving for a cheaper plan. Despite this comment I made, churn among AT&T postpaid phone subscribers rose during Q4 to .98%, up 13 basis points from the .85% churn it reported during Q4 2024. The churn rate is the percentage of subscribers that leave a wireless firm for another one.
For the fourth quarter, AT&T Fiber announced that it added 283,000 net additions and 221,000 net adds were announced for AT&T Internet Air. Analysts expected AT&T to report additions of 272,000 and 260,000 respectively. Combined, this represented the second consecutive quarter that the wireless provider had more than half a million net additions for its advanced home internet services.
The carrier generated $33.5 billion in revenue during the three months that ended when 2025 did. Net income amounted to $4.2 billion or 52 cents per share on an adjusted basis versus 43 cents per share during the same quarter last year.
AT&T had more than 1.5 million postpaid phone net adds in 2025 for the fifth consecutive years
For the fifth consecutive year, AT&T announced more than 1.5 million postpaid phone net adds for all of 2025. For the eighth consecutive year AT&T Fiber had over 1 million net adds, while AT&T Internet Air had 875,000 net additions for 2025. Mobility service revenue totaled $67.4 billion for the year, up 3.1% on an annual basis. During 2025, AT&T purchased $4.3 billion of its common stock which retires those shares. This was done using the authorization approved by the company in 2024.
Consolidated, for all of last year, AT&T collected $125.6 billion in revenue. With net income of $23.4 billion, adjusted earnings per share (EPS) came to $2.12 versus $1.95 a year ago. That was a gain of 8.7% over the year.
"As a result of the Company’s investments in 5G and fiber, including its previously announced acquisitions that are expected to close in early 2026 of substantially all of Lumen’s Mass Markets fiber business and wireless spectrum licenses from EchoStar, AT&T expects to achieve improved growth in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS* and higher free cash flow through 2028."
-AT&T
AT&T reveals its forecasts for 2026-2028
AT&T made some forecasts for the years 2026-2028. During those years it expects service revenue to grow in the low single-digit percentage range annually. Earnings per share should hit $2.25-$2.35 this year with a double-digit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2028.
The report was good news for AT&T shareholders as the stock soared 4.7% today, or $1.08 to $24.08 after underperforming the market since the start of the year. Since 2026 kicked off, AT&T shares have underperformed the S&P 500 benchmark index by 8.2%. Last year, shares of AT&T rose 9%.
Verizon and T-Mobile will be reporting their Q4 and 2025 full year numbers soon
More carrier earnings reports lie ahead. On Friday, Verizon will report its fourth quarter figures, and it is expected to announce a 50,000 to 150,000 increase in postpaid net phone adds. That will be a sharp decline from the 558,000 Verizon reported for that metric during last year's fourth quarter.
T-Mobile will release its Q4 and full-year 2025 numbers on February 11th. Analysts are forecasting that T-Mobile will announce Q4 postpaid phone net adds to hit 570,000 which would allow the carrier to report full-year net postpaid phone adds of 2.9 million for 2025. That would be just outside the lower rage of the company's forecast of 2.95 million to 3.10 million.
Since this is an important category, should T-Mobile fail to report 2025 net new phone adds at 2.95 million or higher, the stock could take a dive. As a result, on
February 11th, my forecast is that T-Mobile will find enough net postpaid phone adds to top the consensus Wall Street forecast and get the stock moving higher.
February 11th, my forecast is that T-Mobile will find enough net postpaid phone adds to top the consensus Wall Street forecast and get the stock moving higher.
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