T-Mobile reported a net profit of $297 million for the fourth quarter of 2015, which is almost triple the $101 million for the same quarter last year.
The carrier killed it on the subscriber side, adding 2.1 million net customers during the fourth quarter, and 8.3 million for the entire year. These numbers include 1.3 million branded postpaid net adds for the fourth quarter and 4.5 million of that category for the full year. T-Mobile’s subscriber base now sits at 63 million.
This marks eleven consecutive quarters of adding more than one million net customers, and the third consecutive month in which the carrier added two million. It also marks the second straight year in which T-Mobile was able to add at least eight million net customers.
Attracting customers is one thing, but keeping them is another. T-Mobile is obviously doing something right here as well because customers are sticking around more than they were in the past. Postpaid phone churn was 1.46 percent during the fourth quarter, which is down from 1.74 percent during the same period last year. The churn rate is the percentage of subscribers that stop using the carrier’s services per month, so the lower the number, the better. T-Mobile also continues to rank high in customer satisfaction, leading J.D. Power’s 2016 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Full-Service Performance Study.
T-Mobile’s success has to be as a result of its ongoing Un-carrier promotions and CEO John Legere’s ability to create a tremendous amount of publicity by bashing the competing carriers. T-Mobile launched Binge On late last year, allowing customers to stream a variety of video services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, and more without those services counting towards their data caps. The service has been under scrutiny due to the belief that it could violate Net neutrality rules, but it’s these kind of deals that are attracting customers.
With all this good news, one has to wonder if T-Mobile can continue to keep up this pace. Interestingly enough, the carrier’s outlook for 2016 only shows an increase of 2.4 and 3.4 million postpaid customers, which would be down from the 4.5 million it achieved in 2015.
The firm’s stock price opened much higher in early trading, hitting a high of $38.31, but a sell-off brought it back to the previous day’s level of $36.44 by late morning.
