AT&T beats Q3 profit estimates, says iPhone 5 supply constraints limited new post-paid adds

AT&T just reported Q3 revenue of $31.5 billion, up 2.6% year-on-year, when adjusted for the sale of the company’s ads business. Revenue from the wireless business was up 6.6%, but the big number is in wireless data income, which shot up 18.3%.

Post-paid average revenue per user (ARPU) for wireless was up 2.4% to $65.20 monthly, and AT&T scored 687,000 net subscriber additions. The carrier reported just 151,00 post-paid net subscriber adds, though, and explained: “Postpaid results were impacted by iPhone 5 inventory constraints which resulted in the vast majority of third-quarter iPhone sales going to existing customers, where there was considerable pent-up demand.” Overall, AT&T activated 4.7 million iPhones in the quarter.

CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement: “In wireless, we had another excellent smartphone quarter, penetration of usage-based mobile data plans continues to climb, and our 4G LTE network build is ahead of schedule.” Watch the mustachioed CEO himself talk about the Q3 earnings in the video below.

source: AT&T