Verizon paid Sampath $4 million last year to keep him as CEO of the Consumer Division
Verizon's new CEO, Dan Schulman, took over on October 6th talking about his plan to remake Verizon as a wireless provider that puts customers first instead of profits. But he immediately laid off 13,000 subscribers, the largest round of job cuts in company history. The CEO said that the layoffs were made in order to generate "enough money to put back into our value proposition to customers."
The departing CEO of Verizon Consumer Group Sowmyanarayan Sampath. | Image credit-Verizon
Interestingly, right after Schulman became CEO of Verizon, the carrier paid Sampath $4 million to keep him as CEO of its Consumer Division. Sampath has been with Verizon for more than 10 years; he led Verizon Business and was Chief Product Officer before he was named CEO of the Consumer Division in 2023. Sampath was also widely regarded as the next in line for the CEO position that Schulman ended up getting.
The departing executive ran Verizon's most important business segment
Sampath helped Verizon's Consumer Group take in $106.81 billion in revenue last year, which is up 17% since 2019. The division was responsible for 78% of Verizon's overall gross making it the most important segment for Verizon.
Alfonso Villanueva, Verizon's Chief Transition Officer, will take over as interim CEO of Verizon Consumer Group. He joined the company in November after working with Schulman at PayPal. His job right now is to help Verizon transition into a customer friendly operation. But this "new" Verizon dd not get off to a good start. Verizon and its customers were rocked last month by a massive outage that prevented customers from making and taking phone calls, sending and receiving texts, and accessing the internet for as long as 10 hours. Verizon ended up crediting subscribers affected by the outage $20 to as much as $240 for each account impacted.
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"We are at a critical inflection point, improving our customer experience and bringing greater intensity to how we execute. As we change and grow, there will be changes in our structure and leadership."
-Dan Schulman, CEO, Verizon
The first quarterly results released after Schulman took over were strong. For the fourth quarter, Verizon announced that it had 616,000 net new postpaid phone additions, the gold standard of performance results announced each quarter. Not only did that figure top Wall Street estimates, but it was also the highest number reported by Verizon for that category since 2019. During the first nine months of 2026, Verizon reported a loss of 347,000 postpaid phone lines. During the company's earnings call following the release of the fourth quarter figures, Verizon forecast that for 2026 it will add 750,000 to 1 million net new retail postpaid phone lines.
Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T shares outperform a very weak market
The carrier also is aiming to report earnings of $4.90 to $4.95 for 2026, which is well ahead of Wall Street's estimate of $4.75. David Barden, head of U.S. communication services at New Street Research, says, "Transition chief and now interim Consumer CEO Villanueva has his work cut out for him balancing internal transformation with external competition."
Is Verizon going to succeed with its turnaround?
Verizon's shares hit its 52-week high today at $47.58 versus a 52-week low of $38.39. At the closing bell on Thursday, the shares are at $47.06. up 5 cents or .11%. Considering that the market got trashed today (Dow Industrial down nearly 600 points), Verizon's close was very strong. In fact, the telecom sector showed signs of strength with T-Mobile up 7 cents to $201.86, and AT&T up 6.5 cents to $27.29. New Street Research's Barden attributes the strength in this sector to comments made by Verizon CEO Schulman during the aforementioned fourth quarter earnings conference call.
During that call, Barden said that Schulman made it clear that Verizon will not resort to price hikes in order to show growth. Wall Street prefers organic growth to growth from artificial means like higher pricing.
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Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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