Led by its nationwide 5G service, T-Mobile now has over 100 million subscribers

The nation’s second largest carrier, T-Mobile, released its third quarter earnings report today after the close of regular New York Stock Exchange trading. As usual, our eyes first searched for postpaid phone additions which is the “gold standard” for carriers. From July through September, T-Mobile reported an industry best 689,000 net postpaid phone additions. That is the 27th consecutive quarter that the company led its national rivals in this metric. Postpaid phone churn was .90% At the same time, it had 56,000 prepaid net additions with prepaid churn at 2.56%

T-Mobile leads the U.S. industry once again in postpaid phone net additions

For the 11th consecutive quarter, T-Mobile led the industry in postpaid net customer additions, hitting a record high at 1,979,000. T-Mobile now has a total customer count of 100.4 million, the highest such number ever reported by the company. One category that doesn’t get much attention is the postpaid other net customer additions which includes T-Mobile for Business. For the third quarter, that figure was 1,290,000 not only leading the industry but also double the figure reported by Verizon and AT&T combined.

T-Mobile’s CEO Mike Sievert said, “Last quarter T-Mobile overtook AT&T to become #2 in U.S. wireless and today we announced our highest ever postpaid net adds. Now, with over 100 million wireless customers and America’s largest 5G network, there is no doubt that we’re the growth leader in wireless. Customers are choosing T-Mobile in record numbers because we are the only ones that can deliver this combination of value and experience with a true 5G network that is available to customers in every single state! We’re consistently and profitably outpacing the competition – and we’re just getting started!”

For the quarter, T-Mobile generated $19.3 billion in revenue, a 74% increase. Of course, the acquisition of Sprint was surely one of the reasons for the large surge in gross. Net Income amounted to $1.3 billion or $1 earnings per share on a diluted basis. That compares to diluted earnings per share of $1.01 for the same quarter last year. The growth in net income for the period was offset by the additional T-Mobile shares issued by the firm due to the acquisition of Sprint which explains the flat earnings per share figure for the period.

The merger, which was done so that T-Mobile could obtain Sprint’s huge hoard of 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum, allows T-Mobile to deliver faster 5G download data speeds. 15% of Sprint’s postpaid traffic has already been transitioned to T-Mobile’s network. Thus, the 5G T-Mobile network now carries 270 million people in 8,300 cities and towns across 1.4 million square miles. That’s more square miles of 5G coverage than both Verizon and AT&T combined. It is 3.5x more than Verizon and 2x more than AT&T.

For the second half of 2020, T-Mobile expects total gains of 1.3 million and 1.4 million in postpaid phone net customer additions.including 600,000 to 700,000 during the fourth quarter alone. Back on August 6th when the company reported its second quarter numbers, T-Mobile announced that it had surpassed AT&T to become the second largest U.S. wireless provider. It was just another sign of T-Mobile’s amazing turnaround that took it from last place among the four majors to number two out of the current top three. The carrier has been the fastest growing of the major wireless providers and many analysts believe that with its layer cake approach to 5G, T-Mobile will end up delivering the fastest 5G data speeds among U.S. wireless firms.

On Wall Street, T-Mobile shares took off like a rocket after the release of the Q3 numbers. During regular trading hours T-Mobile shares rose $1.24 or 1.07% to $117.26. After hours, shares surged $7.73 or 6.59% to $124.99. The current 52 week high (based on regular trading sessions) is $123.42.