T-Mobile added an impressive 8.3 million customers in 2014, preliminary earnings announced
T-Mobile normally leaves it at least three weeks after a quarter has ended before announcing any financial figures. But for Q4 2014, the company has decided to give us an early sneak peak at its final quarter earnings. As well as an overview on 2014. As suspected – last year was huge for our favorite carrier.
In a press release published this morning, T-Mobile announced its preliminary full year 2014 customer highlights as well as its preliminary fourth quarter 2014 highlights. And it looks good on both parts.
In 2014, T-Mobile has shown that it managed to maintain its strong performance throughout the entire calendar year. It added a massive 8.3 million net customers (total). 4.9 million of those net additions were branded postpaid, and 4.0 million of those were phone net additions.
As for the fourth and final quarter of the year, T-Mobile managed to add 2.1 million total customers (net). 1.3 million of those were branded postpaid net customer additions and 266,000 were branded prepaid.
Net adds for each quarter in 2014:
- Q1 – 2.4 million
- Q2 – 1.5 million
- Q3 – 2.3 million
- Q4 – 2.1 million
It’s worth noting that Q1 was the first ever time T-Mobile had added more than 2 million customers to its ranks. Which makes the subsequent 2.3 and 2.1 million in Q3 and Q4 all the more impressive. To reach that milestone once was impressive, to do it three times in a single year is massive.
What’s more, T-Mobile’s porting ratios are really strong. Porting ratio, for those unaware, is the number of customers joining T-Mo from a competitor versus those going in the opposite direction. Versus Verizon, it has a porting ratio of 1.4 to 1.0. Versus AT&T it’s 1.8 and against Sprint its a huge 2.2 to 1.0.
“Porting ratios have been in our favor vs. the competition for seven consecutive quarters and it looks like we will continue to beat everyone on total postpaid phone adds as well,” continued Legere. “We are not slowing down, and customers know it. Just a few weeks ago we unveiled Un-carrier™ 8.0, introducing Data Stash™ with 10GB free LTE data to qualifying Simple Choice™ customers. Now we are the only national provider to let you roll over your unused high-speed data. Clearly customers are seeing through the tricks and the confusion that the other guys offer and coming to T-Mobile for our solutions.”
What this means now is that T-Mobile has just over 55 million total customers. This is an important figure for T-Mo, because it could be enough to ensure that it is officially the third-placed carrier in the U.S. Now we just need to wait and see what Sprint announces. If Old Yeller has managed to add more subscribers over the holiday quarter, T-Mo may just have to wait a little while longer before becoming the #3 carrier officially.
Long story short: T-Mobile has had a very strong year. It’s adding customers at a rate comparable to the big two carriers. In fact, it’s adding more. And while its customer base a spectrum portfolio is nothing compared to VZW and ATT, the rate at which it is growing will surely have the duopoly at least a little nervous about 2015.
Source: T-Mobile