T-Mobile released its third-quarter earnings report on Tuesday and despite some investor angst about missing its EPS consensus estimate, it’s clear that the “Un-carrier” is still shaking up the wireless industry and is posting post-paid subscriber additions that are the envy of the mobile world. For some more context on just how well T-Mobile is doing, let’s go to BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk, who posted some striking numbers comparing T-Mobile’s performance to its rivals on Twitter this morning.
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Here’s the most important one when it comes to quarterly bragging rights:
Q3 post-paid phone net adds$TMUS +843k$VZ +430k$T -545k$S Next Tues
— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) October 27, 2015
Post-paid subscribers deliver more average revenue per user than pre-paid subscribers and are thus a key metric to understanding how well carriers are doing at attracting lucrative customers. As you can see, T-Mobile last quarter added nearly twice the number of post-paid subscribers compared to Verizon while AT&T lost post-paid subscribers on the quarter.
And this isn’t just a fluke for one quarter — here are the numbers for net post-paid phone additions for the entire year:
YTD Post-paid phone net adds$TMUS +2.6m$VZ +0.6m$T -1.2m
— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) October 27, 2015
Not a great number for AT&T.
Speaking of AT&T, this is a number that T-Mobile’s favorite target will certainly not be happy to see:
$TMUS sold more smartphones than AT&T in Q3 (upgrades+new subs, incl pre-paid)
$TMUS 8.1m vs 7.4m last qtr, 6.9m last yr
$T 7.5m— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) October 27, 2015
AT&T still has significantly more subscribers than T-Mobile, of course, but the “Un-carrier’s” aggressive deals for the iPhone 6s, among other things, have impressively helped it blow past AT&T in smartphone sales for one quarter at least.
And finally, Piecyk notes that T-Mobile’s year-over-year churn is down for the third consecutive quarter:
$TMUS post-paid churn up sequentially (seasonal) and down y/y for 3rd consecutive qtr
— Walter Piecyk (@WaltLightShed) October 27, 2015
While this isn’t as big of an indicator as the other two numbers mentioned earlier, it does indicate that T-Mobile is doing a better job of holding onto subscribers than it did a year ago. In other words, customers aren’t just rushing in for cheap iPhone 6s deals and then fleeing for AT&T or Verizon as soon as it’s convenient.
