Telecom giant Verizon on Tuesday said it signed up 42,000 net new pay TV subscribers for its FiOS video service in the second quarter, down sharply from 114,000 in the year-ago period.
In the seasonally weaker second quarter, the company had added 26,000 new pay TV customers.
Verizon said it ended the third quarter with a total of 5.8 million FiOS video connections. The FiOS TV service competes with cable and satellite TV companies.
Verizon added 114,000 net new FiOS broadband connections in the latest quarter, down from 162,000 a year earlier. It ended June with a total broadband user base of 6.9 million.
Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said: “We expect future revenue growth from mobile over-the-top video, including digital advertising, and the Internet of Things.”
The latest quarterly revenue and earnings figures included AOL, which Verizon recently acquired, and exceeded Wall Street estimates. Earnings rose to $4.04 billion, or 99 cents per share, in the third quarter from $3.70 billion, or 89 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue increased 5 percent to $33.16 billion.
CFO Fran Shammo on an earnings conference call was asked about the recently launched mobile-first video service Go90, saying: “Millennials don’t want linear TV content.”
He said the service has 10 exclusive products right now, with 48 more coming soon. He also called early Go90 trends “encouraging,” emphasizing: “We’re 20 days into this. We haven’t done any advertising or promotion.”
