This ranking evaluates how Fortune 500 companies are deploying AI, and how technology leaders value those investments relative to industry peers.

Fortune AIQ 75

The companies on the Global 500 employ 70.2 million people, and their revenue represents more than one-third of the world’s GDP.

Fortune Global 500

With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.5 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $24 billion.

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Fortune AIQ 50

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Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

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G500-2023-Verizon

The 300 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

F500 2023-Verizon Communications

Verizon can boast of being the U.S. cell phone carrier with the most subscribers, with about 144 million consumer and business subscribers as of year-end 2022. But revenue grew only slowly last year. 
<ul> 
 	<li>The company reported total wireless service revenue of more than $74 billion for 2022.</li> 
 	<li>In April 2023, Verizon reported broadband net additions of 437,000 in the first quarter of 2023–the largest quarterly gain in more than a decade. That helped offset a steady decline in customers for its Fios TV products, as more customers defected from traditional cable television.</li> 
</ul>

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation.

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

F500 2022 Verizon

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G500-2021-045-Verizon

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This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-20-Verizon

For an astounding 13th straight year, Apple claims the top spot in Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation, based on a survey of almost 3,800 executives, directors, and analysts.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

G500-2020-044-Verizon

Revenue was steady at Verizon and profits surged 24% as new CEO Hans Vestberg pursued a strategy of building the best 5G wireless network without further diversifying into the entertainment business as rivals AT&amp;T and Comcast have done. (Its Verizon Media unit retains assets from the former AOL and Yahoo, acquired in 2015 and 2017, respectively.) Instead, Vestberg has smartly partnered with others, including Disney, to supply popular shows and movies to the carrier's wireless customers. Verizon also met Vestberg's promise to start 5G service in at least 30 cities by the end in 2019, though in most areas, the coverage was quite limited.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-020-Verizon

Revenue was steady at Verizon and profits surged 24% as new CEO Hans Vestberg pursued a strategy of building the best 5G wireless network without diversifying into the entertainment business, as rivals AT&amp;T and Comcast have done. Instead, Vestberg has smartly partnered with others, including Disney, to supply popular shows and movies to the carrier's wireless customers. Verizon also met Vestberg's promise to start 5G service in at least 30 cities by the end in 2019, though in most areas, the coverage was quite limited.

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This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

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Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Verizon Communications is a telecommunications conglomerate providing telephone and internet services to consumers and businesses, along with wire-line internet in the Northeast through its fiber-optic network, Verizon Fios. Originating as Bell Atlantic Corp. in 1984, it merged with GTE Corp. in 2000 to become Verizon Communications. Its stock is a component of the Dow Jones industrial average.

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Verizon Communications (VZ): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Verizon Communications

verizon communications

Good morning, and welcome to Verizon's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen only mode, and the call will be opened for questions following the presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr.

Brady Connor, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

Thanks, Brad. Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call and customer value update. I'm Brady Connor, and on the call with me this morning are Hans Vesperg, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tony Sciatis, our Chief Financial Officer and we have our Consumer Group CEO, Sam Path, who will provide an update on our consumer strategy. Before we begin, I'd like to draw your attention to our Safe Harbor statement, which can be found at the start of the investor presentation posted on our Investor Relations website. Information in this presentation contains statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward looking and subject to risks and uncertainties.

Discussions of factors that may affect future results is contained in Verizon's filings with the SEC, which are available on our Investor Relations website. This presentation contains certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the financial materials posted on our website. Discussions and comments related to our 2025 guidance exclude any assumptions regarding the potential effects of the tariff environment owing to the uncertain and evolving nature of these impacts. Earlier this morning, a detailed overview of our first quarter results was posted to our Investor Relations website.

We also posted supplemental materials relating to today's call on our website. With that, I'll turn it over to Hans.

Thank you, Brady. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by addressing the evolving policy and macroeconomic landscape. We continue to monitor the ongoing developments and we're confident in our ability to effectively manage our business for our customers and shareholders. In periods of heightened uncertainty, our business has demonstrated remarkable strength, given the importance and the essential nature of our connectivity services, the size and quality of our customer base and the strength of our balance sheet.

Our diverse portfolio of offering serves all market segments and position us for success in any economic environment. And with our bias for action and position of strength, we expect that we will not only weather the current environment, but thrive in it. Now let me turn to our results. We had an exceptional financial start of the year, delivering strong growth across our key financial metrics. Wireless service revenue was up 2.7% at the high end of our guided range.

Adjusted EBITDA of $12,600,000,000 was our highest reported result ever, growing 4% and exceeding our guided range. Free cash flow was up over $900,000,000 and enabled continued execution of our capital allocation priorities. Even with the recent declines in our ability to deliver on our 2025 financial guidance. Our comprehensive portfolio of offerings and strategic moves we have made over the last years position us well for a sustainable financial and subscriber growth while also improving the customer experience. These moves include our brand refresh along with continued evolution of our customer first offerings such as My Plan, My Home and My Biz Plan, organic and inorganic broadband expansion with a pending acquisition of Frontier, AI Connect and satellite partnerships that enables texting anywhere for free.

RootMetrics recently recognized Verizon as the best, fastest and most reliable five gs network in The U. S. And our network continues to get even better. On mobility, we're on track to deploy C band to 80 to 90% of our planned sites by year end and we are aggressively rolling out five gs advanced features. On Fios expansion, we're ahead of our plan year to date to deliver 650,000 incremental passings this year.

On fixed wireless access, our multi dwelling unit solution is expected to gradually ramp over time along with continued expansion of homes and businesses covered with the ongoing C band deployment. Turning to our operational performance. Our segmentation strategy focused on delivering targeted offerings is yielding positive results. We delivered a year over year improvement in combined postpaid and prepaid phone net adds. We did have a slow start on postpaid phone net adds, largely driven by elevated churn due to recent price ups and pressure from federal government accounts.

However, our prepaid net adds of 137,000 were the best since the TrackOne acquisition. In broadband, we continue to take share. With fixed wireless access and fiber, we have the most complete offering covering all segments of the market, and we will cover more than 100,000,000 premises over the time. Our fixed wireless access product continues to lead our broadband growth and we have a great momentum to reach our next milestone of 8,000,000 to 9,000,000 fixed wireless access subscribers by 2028. We're excited to expand our broadband opportunity and continue to scale our mobile and home offerings as we work towards closing the Frontier transaction.

The Consumer Group's multiyear business transformation effort is progressing as planned, and you'll hear more about that from Sampat shortly. In the Business Group, our private networks business continued to scale. We closed more than dozen deals in the quarter including private networks for AdventHealth and Nucor. We were named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for managed IoT connectivity services worldwide and reached an agreement to deliver a turnkey IoT solution for Atlanta Hawks. We have seen accelerated interest in AI Connect and continue to expand our partner ecosystem.

Looking ahead, our priorities are clear. A continued focus on growing wireless service revenue, expanding adjusted EBITDA and generating strong free cash flow. Accelerating our mobility and broadband growth and scale private networks leverage our existing fiber and edge compute assets to unlock new revenue stream through our AI connect offerings focus on financial discipline, operational excellence and customer experience And finally, execute on our capital allocation priorities, invest in the business, support and grow our dividend, pay down debt and eventually share repurchases. With that, I turn the call over

Thanks Hans and good morning everyone. As we reported earlier, the first quarter demonstrated our ability to drive strong financial growth with wireless service revenue growth at the upper end of our guided range. Additionally, we had our best ever reported adjusted EBITDA result at $12,600,000,000 and we delivered an over $900,000,000 improvement in free cash flow from the prior year. We improved our total combined postpaid and core prepaid phone net adds year over year.

We're taking share in broadband and we continue to innovate with My Plan, My Home and our new My Biz Plan to deliver best in class value across all of our customers. Our consumer postpaid phone net losses of $356,000 reflect the impact of recent pricing actions. We exited the first quarter with positive momentum. Consumer postpaid phone gross adds in March were up mid single digits from the prior year and the performance in April continues to be strong. Additionally, our new three year price lock and free phone guarantee is resonating in the market.

We remain confident in our ability to deliver better consumer postpaid phone net adds year over year for the full year. Business phone net adds were 67,000 in the period impacted by pressure within federal government accounts. We continue to work with customers of all sizes to deliver connectivity solutions that match their needs. Our momentum continued to build in core prepaid where we delivered 137,000 net adds. Our strong execution and investment in visible, total wireless and straight talk is paying off and we continue to expect positive service revenue contribution from core prepaid in the second half of the year.

In broadband, our Fios and fixed wireless access offerings are attracting new customers quarter after quarter. We had 339,000 net adds in the period and we continue to take market share. This is a solid start to the year and one we expect to build on as we expand our C band and Fios availability. Shifting to financials, we delivered strong results with 2.7% wireless service revenue growth. This reflects the benefits of pricing actions, expansion of fixed wireless access subscribers and continued adoption of perks and premium plans.

Adjusted EBITDA of $12,600,000,000 grew 4% in the quarter, which represents our best quarter of year over year growth in nearly four years and demonstrates our sustained and disciplined approach to growth. Adjusted EPS was $1.19 for the quarter, up 3.5% year over year. Finally, our free cash flow of $3,600,000,000 positions us to continue to pay down debt in alignment with our capital allocation priorities and ahead of the anticipated close of the Frontier transaction. In closing, we are pleased with the financial performance we saw in the quarter. As Hans mentioned, we have a lot of experience managing through uncertainty in the broader economy and we have a product portfolio that allows us to compete effectively in any environment.

We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our operational and financial goals for 2025. I will now turn the call back over to Hans.

Thank you, Tony. Now let's discuss our strategic approach to the consumer market to drive sustainable subscriber and financial growth. It all starts with how we compete and go to market. Our network is the foundation of everything we offer. We have the best and most reliable network, and we continue to extend our network leadership with our ongoing C band deployment and broadband expansion with fixed wireless access and fiber, including the pending acquisition of Frontier.

Our customer first connectivity offerings deliver unmatched control, value and simplicity for all our customer segments. Over the last two years, we have introduced targeted offers for all customer segments across Mobility and Broadband. As the market leader, we remain committed to introducing new and innovative offerings that meet the evolving needs of our customers. Next is the value added services, which is one of our key differentiators in the market. We offer add on perks including exclusive discounts on some of the top streaming services such as Netflix and Max.

Given the size and the quality of our base and the scale of our distribution network, we offer rates that customers cannot find anywhere else and we will continue to expand our product portfolio. Over the past few years, we have dedicated substantial resources to InCapital to enhance our customer experience through various initiatives including AI for customer care and personalization. Although the industry including Verizon still has room to improve, we have made great progress towards our goal of seamless customer interactions. Lastly, our brand is a pivotal element in our go to market strategy. Recognizing its importance, we made a strategic decision to refresh our brand last year.

And we are committed to further developing and strengthening our brand to drive continued growth and customer engagement. By focusing on these key pillars of our value proposition, we attract new customers, foster loyalty among existing ones and maximize the long term value of each customer relationship. This holistic approach ensures that we remain competitive in the marketplace and drive sustainable subscriber and financial growth. Now let me turn to Sampat, who will provide more details on our consumer transformation journey.

When I stepped into the role of Consumer Unit CEO just over two years ago, Hans and I immediately set a course for a multiyear transformation that offers what customers need in today's increasingly dynamic economic environment. We committed to delivering real value to our customers while driving sustained long term growth. Let me walk you through our transformation journey and the results so far. Beginning in 2023, we revamped our sales engine moving to a regional model, individual sales incentives and a stronger focus on local marketing. We also launched MyPlan, giving customers more control, value and simplicity.

This allowed us to significantly reduce our perceived price premium while driving higher average revenue per user through perks, insurance and financial services. In 2024, we relaunched our brand and accelerated My Plan and My Home adoption. We solidified the Verizon model of convergence with the announcement of the Frontier transaction and ramping up our current in footprint fiber build. This transaction will help enable our long term goal of offering broadband to over 100,000,000 premises, including fiber passings of €35,000,000 to 40,000,000 We also turned around our prepaid business, which includes the industry's largest portfolio of brands. This was driven by a revamp of our value propositions, expanded exclusive and third party distribution and instilling the same operational rigor we introduced in our postpaid business.

The core prepaid brands returned to subscriber growth in 2024 and achieved their best results since the TracFone acquisition this quarter. This demonstrates our ability to win across all market segments. Customers are responding to our offers and we anticipate gaining market share in prepaid this year. As we enter year three, we are doubling down on our customer first strategy with an increased focus on customer retention with the Verizon value guarantee, an industry leading three year price lock, free phone guarantee for everyone and savings you cannot get elsewhere. Before I dive into the Verizon Value Guarantee, let us quickly recap what makes our offering stand out from the competition.

Our strategic differentiation centers on creating real customer value through a unique combination of network superiority and customer first offerings. Our My Plan and My Home offerings have been the key drivers of These offerings go beyond basic connectivity to include premium entertainment and adjacent services that deliver significant savings for the customer. Today, you can get eight of the most popular streaming services from Verizon for $50 That is value customers can only get at Verizon. Our portfolio of Adjacent Services include industry leading insurance products for both mobility and the connected home and give customers even more peace of mind. We offer even more ways to save through our financial service partners and products, including the Verizon Visa card and the Open Bank high yield savings account with Santander, both exclusive to Verizon customers.

This business is growing at a double digit rate and bringing in margin rich service revenue. Finally, we launched Verizon Access loyalty program, giving customers access to events like the exclusive presale of 100,000 Beyonce concert tickets, NFL, NBA and NHL games and lifetime experiences such as the 140,000 free tickets we gave out to the first Verizon Super Bowl Fan Fest parties. There is no other plan in the industry like my plan in my home. And the beauty of having them built side by side is our ability to offer seamless account linkage and promote joint offers. For converged customers, our retention rates are significantly better than those with just mobility or broadband, validating our convergence strategy.

Simply put, we offer the most differentiated value proposition in the industry and with our recently launched offers for both new and existing customers, we are delivering what people want and need on their terms. So now let's turn to what we announced a few weeks ago. We launched a game changing offer, a three year price lock and a free phone guarantee with trade in for new and existing customers. This offer was contemplated in our 2025 guidance and is a key component of our strategy to deliver sustainable growth. The premise of this offer began several quarters ago as emerging consumer trends showed a growing desire for predictability, price control and value, all things that are particularly relevant in today's economic environment.

Customers want peace of mind, and we are giving them just that. The key elements of this offer include a three year price lock guarantee that covers the network portion of all tiers of My Plan and My Home and current customers were automatically enrolled on day one. Guaranteed trade in credit for phones to new and existing customers within their plan tiers free satellite text messaging on all plans. Customers should not have to pay for texting, and it's part of the value we provide to our customers. Customers love our Perks and the massive savings they deliver.

We had over 10,000,000 Perks subscriptions at the end of the first quarter. We now anticipate 15,000,000 subscriptions on our platform by the end of this year, an increase of 1,000,000 Perks from our prior forecast in the year end 2025. They love getting more value for their money with Verizon Visa Card and Openbank high yield savings account. And customers with both mobile and home services get a free monthly perk that will drive customer loyalty. We did not just launch an offer.

We set a new standard for customer value, and customers are responding very well. Early indicators in April suggest strong gross add momentum and very good reception from customers, including many new customers attracted to Verizon. We expect the Verizon value guarantee to provide many benefits to Verizon. First, growth. We will continue to drive revenue through higher volumes, higher premium mix, perk adoption and upgrading customers to MyPlan.

All of that is in addition to revenue benefits from our growing FWA base along with the wholesale business and the momentum with prepaid, which we expect to turn service revenue positive in the second half of the year. Second, better customer retention. In the past, we've made necessary price adjustments, which impacted churn. But we expect trends to improve through the year, and this launch puts us on a path to get back to the lowest churn in the industry over time. And third, we have constructed this offer in a flexible manner to give us continued financial discipline.

The price lock applies to My Plan and My Home Network plans only. It doesn't apply to perks, discounts, taxes or fees. And we can still adjust price on legacy plans or introduce new plans if we see an opportunity in the market. Another important note is that the free phone offer will be tiered by plan and require a device trade in. Overall, we believe this is just the beginning of how we'll earn lasting customer loyalty and continue to grow the Verizon base, including deliver better consumer postpaid phone net adds in 2025 compared to 2024.

We are back to leading the market, not reacting to it. And we are the only carrier of the brand portfolio covering every price point, positioning us for further growth across every segment of the market. The three year price lock guarantee is the next phase in our consumer transformation, giving consumers the best network, value and 20 fourseven support with My Plan and My Home, plus additional peace of mind with a free phone and satellite texting. We want to be people's first choice, providing products, services and experience they can't get elsewhere. With that, let me turn back to Hans.

Thank you, Sampat. In summary, we are on plan with our multiyear consumer transformation. We're offering the most differentiated value proposition and we are well positioned to drive subscriber and financial growth. I'm incredibly proud of the team's dedication and efforts transforming the business. I'm confident that the actions we are taking will set the business up for sustainable long term growth and extend our industry leadership.

Thanks, Hans. Brad, we're ready for the first question.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your touch tone phone. Please unmute your phone and record your name clearly when prompted. Your name is required to introduce your question.

If at any point your question has been answered or you would like to withdraw your request, you may remove yourself by pressing star two. One moment please for the first question. And the first question will come from John Hudlik of UBS. Sir, your line is open.

Hey, thanks and good morning guys. Two questions if I could. Maybe first for Hans on the subject of tariffs, any additional color you can give us on how tariffs on I guess first handsets and then telecom equipment could affect the business? On the handset side, do you expect the promotions to sort of scale with tariffs or and what do you expect the impact to be on upgrades? And then on the equipment side, does tariffs on equipment coming to The U.

S. Mean, the budget stays the same and maybe you do less homes passed or just how that unfolds? And then secondly for Sam Pat, thanks for all the color on consumer segment and the strategy. And thanks for the color on gross adds leaving the quarter. Can we talk a little bit about churn?

I mean, is all the new plans and promotions and offers you have in place, does that help churn in the second quarter? Or do we have to wait till the second half of the year? And that comment on getting back to industry leading churn, is that something you expect to achieve by the fourth quarter, by the end of this year? Or just how more color on how that plays out would be great? Thank you.

Thank you, John. Let me talk about the tariffs. Of course, tariff is a little bit a moving target where they are. But if we take our capital expenditures, it's a very small portion of the €18,000,000,000 which is the midpoint of the guide this year that it is exposed to any tariffs. And on top of that, we are working with all our suppliers and we have done so.

I mean during COVID-nineteen, we had no impact at all with the supply chain issues there were because I think my team is the best in the industry to handle that. So that will not change any type of investments we're doing in CapEx or anything. We cannot foresee that. When it comes to handsets, that's also of course very early to say where the tariff is going to go and what's going to happen. But in general, if the tariff is going to be as high as the same for on the handsets, we're not planning to cover that in our work.

That's just not going to be possible. So we will continue to be financially disciplined in whatever promotions we have, but we will not cover any enormous increase on tariffs on handset. That's ultimately going to hit the consumer in the market. But again, it's too early to say. We don't know where tariff is going to go.

But I think my team is well prepared for handling all of it. And on the consumer side, and I think Sample has talked quite a lot about it, I think that the team has done a tremendous work with doing all the new proposals and the new promotions we had all the way from My Plan and My Home and all of that. And now we come to the third leg with the price lock and the phone guarantee. I think we're right in the moment and we're leading from a very strong financial position. But I'll let Sampa talk a little bit more about the churn and where we are there.

Thank you, Hans. Look, we made a decision to price up certain cohorts in December and January and they were the right trade offs to make. It helped us lock the revenue for the rest of the year and it was the right thing to do. Look, in Q1, the cohorts that were priced up had higher elasticity than anticipated. And the higher churn can be largely attributed and isolated to those cohorts.

So because of that, we think churn is transitory. It is abating and we expect to get back to BAU by the second half of the year. And we've got other levers that we are deploying quite aggressively. The first and the biggest one is Verizon value guarantee. The three year price lock and the free phone base is resonating really well both for our base and for new customers as well.

Second is C band expansion. As Joe gets to between 8090% of all macros to be C band enabled, you tend to see lower churn when that happens as well. And the Verizon model of convergence, look we added 339,000 broadband customers between consumer and business and strong volumes, but the vast majority of those customers are converged, which tends to give a benefit to churn. And then lastly is better customer experience. We have a lot of AI driven customer experiences updates in the funnel in the second quarter and the rest of the year.

So given all of this, we feel that churn is transitory abating and expected to get back to BAU posture by the second half of the year.

Yes. Thanks John. Brad, we're ready for the next question.

The next question will come from Ben Swinburne of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open sir.

Thank you. Good morning. Maybe just to follow the conversation with Sampath. Can you talk a little bit about the March and April gross adds improvement and sort of how much that's been tied to specific promotions, including the new three year price lock? And there was a lot of talk during the first quarter at various conferences about competitive intensity.

I didn't really hear you guys talk about that as being something that's incrementally more concerning, etcetera. So maybe frame the gross commentary if you can and sort of the new plans in the context of the competitive environment. And then maybe for Tony, four percent EBITDA growth for the quarter obviously sets you guys up really nicely for the year. I think your business margins were the highest in, I think, since 2021. Anything in the quarter around expenses that we should think about as nonrecurring?

Or any commentary on how you're feeling about the EBITDA guidance for the year? It seems like you could be trending maybe to the upper end of the range. But I'll let you talk to that if you will. Thank you.

Thank you, Ben. I'll start and then I'm to hand it over to Thapat and Tony. But on the competitive environment, I think we have seen that for quite a while. I mean it is a competitive market. We performed well in that market.

I think our propositions that we have had in the market that's really resonating with our customers both on the business side and on the consumer's end. And then adding also both the wireless business and the broadband business. I mean the broadband business continued to gain share in this quarter. We have done that for I'm not sure how many quarters right now as well as now we turned around the prepaid business as well, which I'm very proud of what the team has done. So I think we're competing well.

But of course, it's to be competitive. It's a great product and it's a great market, but we there's nothing new when it comes to that. I will ask Sampeh to comment on the momentum that we have gained in March and April. But on the finance before I move it over to Tony, yes, what you saw in this quarter is that how hardware worked with efficiency because we have leverage right now. We grow 2.7% and we have 4% bottom line.

Our expenses, if you take it by the handsets, cost is down compared to last year. So we're coming down in expenses. And the team is doing a great job here. And I have to say also on the Verizon Business Group, they have been on the journey for years right now with the headwind of wireline to take down the cost at the same time building AI connect fiber broadband business wireless business. And now you start seeing that they turn around.

And this is second quarter of year over year growth. And I know that Kyle and the team are committed to continue that work. So I will start with Sampe and talk about the momentum in March and April. And then we'll go over to Tony to talk a little bit more about leverage.

Thanks Hans. Look, it's always a competitive market. We pulse in and out promotions as we see volumes in the market. And when we have an opportunity to go for volumes, we go for it. Look, we have a playbook.

We like our playbook. It's an aggressive playbook, but it's also a playbook that lets us win. In March, we started seeing mid single digit growth in gross adds in March and the last two weeks of March was very good and strong for us. As we came into April, we launched the Verizon value guarantee and we are seeing double digit growth in gross adds. I think that's largely because how well the offer is resonating both for base as well as new customers coming into the category.

So we have good momentum coming out of March and currently in April right now. And this gives us comfort that in 2025, we'll have better for net add than in 2024. Because at the back half of the year, we see churn coming back to a BAU posture and continued momentum on gross adds. The combination of those two is what gives us comfort that we will have a good for NetAdia in 2025.

Okay. Good morning, Ben. So on the EBITDA on your question, look, we're off to a great start and we're very confident in the EBITDA guide and it starts with the strong service revenue growth that Hans mentioned at 2.7 and very healthy customer economics when you look at that versus the proper amortization as well. And as Hans mentioned, we continue to focus on the cost transformation work and the always working to make the business more efficient whether it's the customer care managed services work that Kyle and Sam Path are doing day in and day out or the network decommissioning as well. And we also completed our voluntary separation program and we expect to see a full run rate benefit of that for the balance of the year.

And we've said many times volumes are important, but we're going to drive volumes and be very disciplined in support of our service revenue, EBITDA and free cash flow guidance and that has not changed at all. On your question on business margins, look Hans mentioned this earlier, the team is doing a great job in growing the wireless portfolio. If you think about the mix of business shifting more wireless now, Kyle and team have been growing both mobility and FWA for many quarters now. So that mix shift is skewing more wireless. And as that skews more wireless, that brings more margin with it.

And we're also seeing some early contribution from private five gs networks and also AI Connect where we saw improvements in the fourth quarter. And then on the cost side, the team continues to take cost out, being very disciplined at the deal desk, particularly on business wireline. And also the work we're doing around HCL with managed services and also the network DCOMs as well. So we're pleased with the start to the year. Obviously, the goal here is to grow the business margins the full year, and we're off to a great start.

Yes. Thanks, Ben. Brad, we're ready for the next question.

The next question comes from Jim Schneider

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe first off on the consumer side, maybe, Sampath or Hans, you could talk to the broad sort of behavior you're seeing from consumers from March into April. Are you seeing any kind of significant change in consumer behavior, trade downs, more reticence to upgrade phones? Or actually are you seeing potentially consumers react to the potential for tariffs and actually pulling forward some of the upgrades into the month of April?

I mean maybe how are you thinking about that, the impact of the sort of knock on impact of tariffs on consumer behavior? Anything you're seeing in terms of the deterioration of consumer in terms of health credit metrics or whatnot? And then maybe as a sort of second question, can you maybe just sort of talk about sort of following on the business EBITDA question? I mean that really sticks out to me as the best growth you've seen in quite some time. Can you maybe talk about the cost metrics underlying that?

Are those structural in nature due to the HCL arrangement? Or are there any one time effects that we should think about? And do you think business EBITDA growth is sustainable from here? Thank you.

Thank you. When it comes to consumer behavior, I mean, general, we haven't seen any major consumer shifts in behavior even though we read the same articles as everybody else that consumer sentiment come back or coming down. Of course, we have a product of mobility and broadband that's so essential for our consumers and for our business customers because it's just so relevant. So we haven't seen that. And Tony can talk a little about the payments as well, but they have continued very intact, no deterioration on payments.

And then there have been speculation also of any growth in handsets due to tariffs. I think what we can see and I think Sampart can talk about it is that we have seen somewhat uptick, but I think it comes more from our offering that we start with a new three year price lock in as well as that we had any phone guarantee trading. I think that has driven a little bit more handsets for us not per se. But maybe it's Sampat and Tony will talk a little bit and Tony will talk about the margin as well. So let's start with Sampat about the momentum there.

Look, we have good momentum in our business and March and April were very strong and April have double digit growth there. We are seeing good premium mix. In other words, portion of our base, new customers that is taking our premium plans, that mix has actually grown higher. So that suggests that, hey, our value prop is resonating well and customers like what we offer. In terms of upgrades, look, Q1 was a bit soft and we didn't chase volumes where there was no demand.

We didn't think it made sense for us to chase volumes there. For the whole year, I think we are still committing to a mid single digit growth in overall upgrade. There will be some volatility quarter to quarter as that works through. As we come into April, there'll be some pent up demand mostly from the Verizon value guarantee. Customers really like that.

So they're going to take some take advantage of that. But overall for the year, we still think mid single digit growth for upgrade sold. Tony?

Yes, sure. Good morning, Jim. So on the customer payment trends, look, Hans said this in the prepared remarks, the business is very resilient and the demand and priority for connectivity is still high. And the payment trends we see are still very stable in both consumer and business and very much at normal historical levels. The agings and the quality of the receivables continue to be very strong.

And the bad debt we see and as you know we have a very high quality customer base. And the bad debt that we do see trends with volume growth and you see the gross add growth. But as always we're going to continue to monitor the trends very closely, but no change in trends there.

And then on the Verizon Business Group's performance, I think that they are now into year over year improvements. And the focus for Kyle and the team together with Tony is to continue to drive year over year improvements. That can be a little bit up and down, but definitely the focus and the target is clear for us, continue to grow our Verizon business bottom line. And they have proven it in two quarters right now. So we are pleased with what we're seeing right now.

Yes, great. Thanks Jim. Brad, we're ready for the next question.

The next question comes from Michael Rollins of Citi. Your line is open sir.

Thanks and good morning. So as you're looking to still target better consumer phone net adds in '25 over '24 can you give us an update on how you're seeing postpaid phone industry growth and the volumes you're expecting for the year and how important that is relative to your target for your own volume? And then within that are you seeing any impacts from changes in immigration policy? And do you have a better sense of how to frame the potential sensitivities to the forward operating prospects? And then just one more if I could.

You mentioned some impact from the federal government on business postpaid phone net adds. I'm just curious if there's additional impacts that you could see as you move through this year, whether it's on the wireless side or on the business wireline side? Thanks.

Let me start. I mean, first of all, I mean, I'll let Sampat comment on the postpaid market. But I would say on the immigration, we don't have any impacts of that and that's not something that we have seen anything from. When it comes to the federal government, what we comment on in the quarter was wireless, where we had a little bit reductions in wireless as we saw some impact of the new government and their efficiency work. But all in all, all other things in wireless when it comes to large enterprise and SMBs very strong and continue to take share.

I mean, I'm not sure how many quarters we have now with Kyle and team taking share and continue to grow the wireless portfolio. So I'm pleased what I see. So that's where it is. But Sam, talk about the postpaid market business and consumer.

year, we had estimated that the market is likely to grow between 8,000,008,500,000 postpaid phones both for the consumer and the business segment. Sitting where we are right now, we think that number holds. But remember more than 50% of that is pre to postpaid migration, I. E. Customers who are on prepaid plans migrating to postpaid.

This is not a segment Verizon typically plays in directly. We play it through our partners, but directly we do not play in the space there. So that segment could have some impact, but very little impact to Verizon. The second is on the prepaid side, immigration could impact the lower end of prepaid. That's also not a segment where Verizon has a high level of participation in that segment.

So and on prepaid, despite lower immigration last three quarters, we're actually seeing the best performance in a very long time. We're gaining on the higher end of prepaid, which is why we are seeing strong performance despite low immigration in those segments.

Great. Thanks, Thanks. Yes. Brad, we're ready for the next question.

The next question comes from Sebastiano Petty of JPMorgan. Your line is open. Mr. Petty's line has disappeared. We'll go ahead and move on to Mr.

Peter Sopino of Wolfe Research. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, good morning everybody. Two if I may. Marketing, in light of your churn experience over the last two years, does the market's ARPA expectation need to adapt to a less aggressive pricing growth trajectory? Are feeling too much pressure from whatever the expectations are about pricing to serve all your needs? And then secondly on FWA, I'm wondering when that multiyear expansion plan might begin to pressure either or both of CapEx or tower rental costs as some of your five gs cells become more utilized?

Verizon Communications (VZ) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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