T-Mobile has uninspiring Q1
T-Mobile has just announced its Q1 2013 numbers, folks, and things aren’t looking quite as peachy as T-Mobile’s new “UNcarrier” attitude would have you believe. T-Mobile’s aggressive new strategy caused the company to take some nasty bumps. While pre-paid revenue was up to $507 million on the quarter from $474 million last quarter, the company’s post-paid segment revenues dropped nearly 5% to $3.2 billion. In all, T-Mobile’s $4.7 billion of revenue this year was about $200 million less than what they did the same quarter a year ago.
Profits were also slim at $107 million. This is a steep drop from the $200 million T-Mobile made in Q1 2012, but compared to last quarter — where Magenta didn’t even turn a profit — it looks quite promising. T-Mobile boasted a total net additions number of 579,000, driven by strong pre-paid additions of 202,000. T-Mobile lost 199,000 post-paid accounts, but that is a staggering year-over-year improvement of 61%. Another glimmer of hope from the company was its churn rate of 1.9%, the lowest since Q2 2008.
It will take a lot of work to keep these numbers moving in the right direction, and T-Mobile’s banking on its bold new strategy to help do just that. While the company’s new plan and pricing structures are more attractive than most other carriers’, it still has to find a way to lure customers away from their comfort zones.
That should be easier to do in 2013 with a planned aggressive rollout of its 4G LTE network, and with the spectrum MetroPCS provides it will put T-Mobile in good position to get their network in tip-top shape to better compete with the big boys. Head to T-Mobile’s site for the full numbers.