T-Mobile US again raised its target for customer growth this year, after adding 1.5 million new subscribers in Q2. The mobile operator now expects retail postpaid net additions of 3.0-3.5 million this year, up from a forecast in May of 2.8-3.3 million. The company reached a total 50.545 million customers at the end of June, after adding 908,000 postpaid and 102,000 prepaid retail customers in Q2. It also gained 225,000 M2M customers and 245,000 wholesale subscribers in the three months.
Postpaid retail growth included 579,000 phone customers and 329,000 mobile broadband users, mostly tablets. Postpaid phone ARPU continued to fall, dropping to USD 49.32 from USD 50.48 in Q1. The portion of postpaid customers on Simple Choice plans rose to 80 percent at the end of the second quarter from 75 percent three months earlier and is expected to hit 85-90 percent by year-end.
Despite pressure on ARPU from the Simple Choice plans, T-Mobile grew quarterly service revenues 7.1 percent year-on-year pro forma or its takeover of MetroPCS, to USD 5.48 billon. Adjusted EBITDA was up 14.7 percent on the same basis to USD 1.45 billion, and T-Mobile maintained its outlook for annual EBITDA of USD 5.6-5.8 billion. The operator also ended four consecutive quarters of net losses with a net profit of USD 391 million in Q2, helped by a gain on the swap of spectrum with Verizon.
Capex was down slightly to USD 940 million in Q2, and the target for the full year remains USD 4.3-4.6 billion. T-Mobile said its LTE coverage reached over 233 million people and it would start deploying its 700 MHz spectrum this quarter as well as expanding Wideband LTE. The operator also claimed nationwide coverage with the recently launched VoLTE service, with over 200 million people covered as of 31 July.
Around 60 percent of the MetroPCS spectrum has now been refarmed to the T-Mobile network, and the shutdown of its CDMA network will continue in H2. Total costs for the shutdown are estimated at USD 250-30 million for the full year.
