Verizon reported third-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.31 a share on $34.31 billion of revenue, added 406,000 postpaid phone subscribers, and raised its full-year guidance for the third consecutive quarter.
Verizon reported third-quarter 2026 results on Monday that set new company benchmarks, with adjusted earnings of $1.31 a share, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of $34.31 billion, up 1.5 percent. The company added 406,000 postpaid phone subscribers, its strongest third quarter for that measure in five years, and raised its full-year guidance for the third consecutive quarter.
Service revenue rose 3.5 percent to $29.20 billion, while mobility and broadband service revenue reached $23.5 billion, up 2.9 percent. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 8 percent to a record $13.80 billion, with the margin widening to 40.2 percent from 37.8 percent. Wireless equipment revenue fell 9 percent to $5.12 billion as customers kept handsets longer and the company cut back on device subsidies. Postpaid phone churn improved to 0.94 percent from 0.98 percent, and free cash flow rose 12.1 percent to $7.8 billion.
Verizon now expects adjusted earnings of $5.04 to $5.06 a share for 2026, growth of 7 to 7.5 percent, up from 6 to 7 percent, and 1.1 million to 1.2 million postpaid phone net additions for the year. It also signed an agreement valued at more than $2 billion with Amazon Web Services to supply high-capacity fibre connections for data centres running artificial intelligence workloads, after announcing a fibre deal of more than $1 billion with Google in July. Chief executive Dan Schulman said in the company’s release that Verizon was winning loyal, high-value customers while expanding margins, reducing churn and generating strong sustained cash flow.
Verizon’s own release confirms every headline figure in this report. The earnings beat the Zacks consensus estimate of $1.27 a share, while revenue fell short of the Zacks consensus of $34.81 billion; the revenue miss holds under the LSEG consensus of $34.74 billion cited in other coverage, so the shortfall is not an artefact of one provider’s estimate. Shares were broadly flat in pre-market trading after the announcement, according to Hargreaves Lansdown.
The next checkpoint is the fourth quarter, for which Verizon expects mobility and broadband service revenue growth of about 4 percent. The question for the rest of the year is whether subscriber momentum holds now that the company is leaning on its Simplicity plans and loyalty programme rather than heavy handset subsidies to win and keep customers.