AT&T sees first ever $1B revenue quarter for U-verse as IPTV drives telco's consumer business

AT&T continued to ride the back of its wireline data service and U-verse television product in the second quarter, adding more than 209,000 subscribers to take it over 2.5 million overall, and saying its AT&T U-verse services topped $1 billion for the quarter for the first time ever.

The telco reported said it turned a $4.02 billion profit for the quarter, or 68 cents per share, up from $3.2 billion, or 54 cents a share in the like quarter last year. Second-quarter consolidated earnings were $30.8 billion, up a modest $194 million, or 0.6 percent, from a year ago.

"We delivered another strong quarter, with improved revenue trends, double-digit earnings growth and solid cash flow. These results add to our confidence going into the second half of the year," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive officer. "We continue to see positive signs of growth in almost every customer segment of our business, especially wireless, which speaks to the quality of our execution and our leadership in the industry's most powerful growth driver - mobile broadband. I am excited by the opportunities ahead."

On the wireline side, AT&T said it saw IP date revenues, driven by U-verse expansion, increase 32 percent, it was the second straight quarter of sequential growth in wireline consumer revenues. Total revenue from residential customers totaled $5.4 billion, flat compared to the second quarter of 2009. Versus the first quarter of 2010, consumer wireline revenues increased 1.1 percent.

AT&T added 209,000 U-verse TV subscribers, an increase of almost 60 percent over the past year. In the second quarter, the AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet attach rate continued to run above 90 percent.

More than three-fourths of AT&T U-verse TV subscribers have a triple- or quad-play option from AT&T. ARPU for U-verse triple play customers continued to rise, up nearly $160, or 13.8 percent year over year and 6.8 percent from the first quarter of 2010.

AT&T's U-verse deployment now reaches 25 million living units. Companywide penetration of eligible living units is more than 13 percent, and across areas marketed to for 30 months or more, overall penetration is more than 22 percent. AT&T's total video subscribers, which combine the company's U-verse and bundled satellite customers, reached 4.6 million at the end of the quarter, representing 17.9 percent of households served.

U-verse continues to drive a transformation in AT&T's consumer business, reflected by the fact that consumer IP revenues now represent 40.4 percent of AT&T's consumer wireline revenues, up from 30.6 percent in the year-earlier quarter. In the second quarter, AT&T U-verse revenues exceeded $1 billion for the first time, more than twice the U-verse revenues in the second quarter of 2009.

For more:
- see this release [1]