Verizon reported double-digit growth in second-quarter profits amid continued strong demand for its mobile and fibre broadband services. Revenues rose 4.3 percent from a year earlier to USD 29.8 billion, and operating profit jumped 16.0 percent to USD 6.6 billion. EBITDA increased 9.5 percent to USD 10.7 billion, and the margin improved 170 basis points to 35.9 percent. The US operator reported a net profit of USD 0.78 per share, including a 5-cent one-time gain on pensions, up from USD 0.64 a year earlier.
Operating cash flow rose to USD 17.1 billion in the first half of the year from USD 15.3 billion in H1 2012, and capex increased to USD 7.6 billion from USD 7.4 billion over the same period. Verizon raised its capex budget for the full year to USD 16.4-16.6 billion, versus a previous estimate of USD 16.2 billion, in order to meet stronger demand for mobile data services and start deploying its AWS spectrum in the second half of the year.
Revenues at Verizon Wireless, the joint venture with Vodafone, rose 7.5 percent year-on-year to USD 20.0 billion. Service revenues improved 8.3 percent to USD 17.1 billion, and the EBITDA margin on service revenues increased by 80 basis points from a year ago to 49.8 percent.
Verizon passed 100 million retail mobile connections in the quarter, after adding a net 1.0 million new retail lines in the three months, including 941,000 postpaid subscribers. The actual number of postpaid customer accounts was just 35 million, as most lines are on a shared or family plan. Average revenue per postpaid account was USD 152.50 per month in Q2, up 6.4 percent from a year earlier.
At the wireline activities, consumer revenues continued to grow, up 4.7 percent to USD 3.6 billion thanks to expansion in the Fios fibre broadband services. Consumer ARPU rose 9.4 percent year-on-year to USD 109.67 and was over USD 150 for Fios customers. Verizon added a net 45,000 broadband customers in the quarter for a total 8.9 million, of which 5.8 million on Fios, up by 161,000. By mid-year, the company was over half way to its target of convertising 300,000 households to Fios this year. The service was available to 18.0 million homes at the end of June.
Fixed-line revenues in the business segment continued to decline, with the Global Enterprise division dropping to USD 1.7 billion from USD 1.8 billion a year ago. Overal wireless EBITDA fell to USD 2.2 billion from USD 2.3 billion a year earlier, giving a margin of 22.2 percent.
