T-Mobile USA Q3 2012 earnings: Revenue drops 6 percent to $4.9 billion, profit down 15 percent

T-Mobile USA just announced its Q3 2012 financials, and both revenue and profits are down over last year. The company took in $4.9 billion, 6.4 percent less than last year, and earned $1.2 billion, a decline of 15.2 percent year-on-year. The mobile operator said while it earned more from equipment sales, it wasn't enough to offset an 8.7 percent drop in service revenue over last year. As for profits, T-Mob said that higher advertising costs ate into its margins, resulting in the shortfall over last year. Despite the otherwise gloomy news, the telecom said that it added 160,000 new users (net) over last quarter -- including 365k branded prepaid customers -- and improved "churn" (clients switching carriers) by 30 basis points to 2.3 percent. The company feels its MetroPCS merger will also start to pay off soon, figuring it'll soon have "LTE deployment in 90 percent of the top 25 US markets." All of that sounds grand, but investors will likely want some of the red ink on its balance sheets to turn to black, sooner than later.

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Filed under: Cellphones, T-Mobile

T-Mobile USA Q3 2012 earnings: Revenue drops 6 percent to $4.9 billion, profit down 15 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 01:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.