What AT&T’s Postpaid Phone Churn Rate Signals
In its recent earnings, AT&T posted its best-ever first-quarter postpaid phone churn rate of 0.84%, improving year-over-year and sequentially.
May 16 2018, Updated 9:02 a.m. ET
AT&T’s postpaid phone churn rate
AT&T (T) is focusing on reducing its postpaid phone churn rate, as lower churn rates are favorable for mobile operators. A higher postpaid phone churn rate hurts companies’ operating margins.
In its recent earnings, AT&T posted its best-ever first-quarter postpaid phone churn rate of 0.84%, improving year-over-year (or YoY) and sequentially. AT&T’s management attributed this improvement to the wireless-video bundle.
This trend could be significant given that T-Mobile (TMUS) and Sprint (S) have made much of their capability to attract customers from other mobile operators such as Verizon (VZ) and AT&T.
AT&T’s peer comparison of postpaid phone churn rate
If we compare the best telecom players in the US, we’ll find that Verizon reported a postpaid phone churn rate of 0.80% in the first quarter. Sprint reported a postpaid phone churn rate of ~1.7% in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2017 (quarter ended March 2018). T-Mobile’s postpaid phone churn rate of ~1.1% in the first quarter improved from both the preceding quarter and its churn rate of ~1.2% in the first quarter of 2017.
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