AT&T (T) managed to understand elevated momentum from customers in the course of the first few months of this 12 months, regardless of lately scaling again an important low cost.
In its first-quarter earnings report for 2025, AT&T revealed that it generated a web earnings of $4.7 billion in the course of the quarter, which is nineteen% larger than what it earned throughout the identical quarter in 2024.
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AT&T additionally added 324,000 new postpaid cellphone clients and 261,000 new Fiber web clients in the course of the first few months of the 12 months.
Associated: AT&T quietly points stern warning to clients
These outcomes come after AT&T quietly warned clients final month that beginning on April 24, their autopay low cost will lower from $10 to $5 in the event that they pay their month-to-month invoice with a debit card. This transfer pissed off clients, with some even threatening to change cellphone suppliers.
Whereas AT&T is dealing with elevated income, the cellphone provider is sounding the alarm on the potential influence of a rising menace.
On April 2, President Donald Trump raised eyebrows throughout the nation when he introduced a ten% “baseline” tariff on all international locations importing items to the U.S., with roughly 60 international locations seeing larger tariff charges.
Tariffs are taxes firms pay to import items from abroad, and the additional price is commonly handed all the way down to customers by means of value hikes.
Nevertheless, on April 9, he switched gears and enforced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on all international locations (besides China), dropping them to a common fee of 10%. He additionally unexpectedly hiked tariffs on China to 145%.
Associated: Verizon suffers main loss as clients swap gears
Throughout an earnings name on April 23, AT&T CEO John Stankey mentioned that tariffs can have a unfavorable influence on quite a few units the corporate sells.
“The introduced tariffs may doubtlessly improve the price of smartphones and different units, in addition to the price of community and technical tools,” mentioned Stankey. “The magnitude of any improve will depend upon quite a lot of elements, together with how a lot of the tariffs our distributors cross on, and the influence that the tariffs have on client and enterprise demand.”
He additionally warned that AT&T might must hike costs for its units on account of Trump’s tariffs.
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“So I believe that if finally prices are handed to us from those who we purchase handsets from, sadly for the shopper, we’re going to must provide you with some new methods for them to determine the best way to digest that improve in pricing,” mentioned Stankey.