Verizon today revealed its Q4 2014 results, and it looks like the quarter was a mixed bag for Big Red.
Verizon says that it added 2.1 million connections in Q4 2014, including 672,000 postpaid phones. At the end of the quarter, Verizon had 108.2 million total connections, 102.1 million of which were postpaid customers. Total smartphone penetration finished at 79 percent, up from 70 percent in Q4 2013, and around 84 percent of Verizon’s total data traffic goes over its LTE network.
Ol’ Red explains that 9.8 percent of its postpaid base upgraded to a new device during Q4 2014 and that 93 percent of those upgrades were smartphones.
Finally, Verizon says that it finished Q4 2014 with a retail postpaid churn of 1.14 percent. Churn rate is the percent of customers that leave a carrier during a given period of time. Verizon’s churn has been growing steadily in recent quarters, finishing at 0.94 percent in Q2 2014 and 1.00 percent in Q3 2014.
So while Verizon managed to add many customers during Q4 2014, it also saw a sizable growth in its churn rate. Exactly why Verizon’s churn is growing is unclear, but offers like Sprint’s Cut Your Bill In Half campaign and T-Mobile’s Un-carrier moves could have contributed.
Verizon is holding a conference call to discuss its Q4 2014 results at 8:30 am ET. I’ll be listening in and will let you know if the big red carrier has any other interesting info to share.