T-Mobile US said it added a net 1.9 million new customers in the fourth quarter of 2017, taking its total base to nearly 72.6 million at year-end. Over the full year, the mobile operator gained more than 5 million new customers for the fourth consecutive year. After meeting its FY guidance, the company said its majority shareholder Deutsche Telekom is considering buying more shares in the US operator.
Brand postpaid net adds reached 1.1 million in Q4 and over 3.6 million in the full year, meeting the high end of the company's upgraded guidance of 3.3-3.6 million postpaid net adds in 2017. Branded postpaid phone net customer additions were 891,000 in the fourth quarter, which T-Mobile said means it led the market for the sixteenth consecutive quarter. Branded postpaid phone churn fell 10 basis points from a year ago to 1.18 percent, the company's best Q4 result ever.
T-Mobile also added 149,000 new prepaid customers in Q4 and 855,000 in the full year, led by its MetroPCS brand. The company said prepaid growth was held back by customer migrations to postpaid, which reduced prepaid net customer additions by around 180,000 in the fourth quarter and 700,000 for full-year 2017.
Wholesale net customer additions were 633,000 in the fourth quarter of 2017 and 1.2 million for full-year 2017.
DT to buy more shares
T-Mobile also gave an update on its share repurchase programme started in December 2017. So far it's bought 7 million shares at an average price of USD 63.34 each, meaning it's spent USD 444 million of the USD 1.5 billion authorised for the programme.
The share buyback runs until the end of 2018. T-Mobile said that Deutsche Telekom, its majority stockholder, also is considering plans to purchase additional shares in T-Mobile in the course of this year.
