Dallas, Texas 10/22/2013 (Financialstrend) – Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) is a $144 billion domestic telecom provider. It ranks #1 in U.S in terms of numbers of active subscribers and has maintained a steady lead over its nearest rival AT&T which boats of 112 million subscribers. It has also diversified into information services providing services to commercial and governmental agencies. It has also entered the entertainment sector with chosen set of products.
Verizon stock has been on the move in the past few weeks on the browsers. Most analysts rate a buy on it while no analyst has put a sell rating on it. The company stock has appreciated by 18% in the last 12 months on the back of revenue growth, increase in net income, expanding profit margins and growth in earnings per share. In the last 5 trading sessions alone, Verizon had seen an upward moment of almost 8.2%. In the short term it has shown a good 5.5% increase and has improved earnings of around 22.09% year to date. In the June-August timeframe, Verizon has accounted for 37.1% of U.S. smart phone sales by bundling its voice and data services with cell phone handsets. This represents a 520 bps increase on a year on year compare. However, the company has given a soft forecast with respect to phone upgrade in a year on year compare for the 4Q.
Smartphone users made up 64.4% of Verizon’s post-paid subscriber base at the end of 2Q, up from 61.4% at the end of 1Q. In spite of registering good growth over its previous quarter, Verizon came second to AT&T and trailed by 73% to its competitor. Higher smart phone sales hurt near-term margins (due to carrier provided discounts on handsets), but also boosted the average revenue per unit since subscribers migrated to costlier data plans. Verizon ended October 21st at $50.58 down by .16% from its previous close.
