Verizon Lifts Outlook on Postpaid Subscriber Growth, Inks $2B+ Amazon Deal — Update

By Kelly Cloonan

Verizon Communications boosted its full-year outlook again as it continues to attract new customers for its postpaid phone service.

The mobile carrier also on Monday said it signed a deal valued at more than $2 billion with Amazon Web Services to supply dark fiber for agentic and generative artificial-intelligence workloads. The agreement follows a similar deal earlier this year with Alphabet's Google, which was valued at more than $1 billion.

"These two contracts are a clear signal that the largest builders of AI infrastructure in the world are choosing Verizon as a strategic connectivity partner," Chief Executive Dan Schulman said during a call with analysts.

Schulman said Verizon is in talks with additional hyperscalers, neocloud providers and large enterprise clients to supply fiber connectivity. The company is also seeing momentum with several partners looking to use its network hubs for AI inference and edge computing, he said.

Verizon gained a net 406,000 postpaid phone connections in the latest quarter, marking its strongest third-quarter performance on the closely watched metric in five years. Analysts polled by FactSet expected 195,300 postpaid phone net additions.

Schulman said the company is gaining loyal, high-value customers as it shifts away from heavy subsidies to focus on other offerings, like its expanded loyalty program and its Simplicity plan, which it rolled out earlier this year.

"We are not buying customers. We are winning them on revenue-positive terms and keeping them longer," Schulman said during a call with analysts.

The postpaid strength helped Verizon post higher third-quarter profit and revenue.

Schulman, who took the helm of Verizon last October, said the latest quarterly results are proof that it's evolved into a structurally different company.

"Verizon is in a fundamentally better position operationally, financially and competitively," Schulman said. "Our transformation has taken root and our results show it."

The latest results prompted the company to raise its full-year guidance for the third consecutive quarter.

Verizon now expects adjusted earnings per share of $5.04 to $5.06 for the full year, compared with its prior view of $4.99 to $5.04, and now projects total full-year postpaid phone net additions of about 1.1 million to 1.2 million, up from a previous range of 875,000 to one million.

The company also raised its projection for mobility and broadband service revenue growth to be in the upper half of its prior forecast of 2.5% to 3% for the year.

Wall Street projects adjusted earnings of $5 per share and postpaid phone net additions of 975,000 for the year.

Verizon's third-quarter profit came in at $5.3 billion, or $1.25 a share, compared with $5.06 billion, or $1.17 a share, a year earlier.

Adjusted earnings per share were $1.31, compared with analyst estimates of $1.27.

Revenue ticked up 1.5% to $34.3 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $34.77 billion.

Mobility and broadband service revenue rose 2.9% to $23.5 billion. Equipment revenue declined 9%, as consumers continue to hold on to their mobile devices for longer before upgrading. The company also cited its move to cut back spending on device subsidies.

The company also added 137,000 postpaid net accounts, which it said was its best performance in more than a decade, as well as 314,000 net broadband connections in the quarter.

Write to Kelly Cloonan at kelly.cloonan@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2026 10:10 ET (14:10 GMT)