Analyst(s): Ron Westfall
Publication Date: October 25, 2024
T-Mobile’s Q3 2024 earnings report highlights industry-leading growth in postpaid phone customer additions, profitability, and 5G network expansion. The company reported a 43% increase in net income, raised its full-year guidance, and surpassed 6 million broadband customers. T-Mobile’s continued focus on customer satisfaction and technological advancements positions it for sustained growth in the competitive telecommunications market.
What is Covered in this Article:
- T-Mobile’s postpaid phone and broadband growth
- Financial performance and profitability
- Technological advancements in 5G and VoNR
- Raised guidance for 2024
- Analyst insights on T-Mobile’s future outlook
The News: T-Mobile’s Q3 2024 earnings report highlighted the company’s industry-leading growth in postpaid phone net customer additions, profitability, and 5G network leadership. The company added 865,000 postpaid phone customers, the highest Q3 result in a decade, and achieved a postpaid phone churn rate of 0.86%. Service revenues reached $16.7 billion, up 5% year-over-year, while net income grew 43% to $3.1 billion. T-Mobile also surpassed 6 million broadband customers, expanding its fixed wireless access (FWA) services. The company raised its full-year guidance, forecasting postpaid net customer additions between 5.6 and 5.8 million and core adjusted EBITDA between $31.6 billion and $31.8 billion.
T-Mobile Q3 FY2024 Driven by Customer Growth and 5G Leadership
Analyst Take: T-Mobile’s Q3 2024 highlights the company’s achievement of customer growth, combined with a significant increase in profitability. With the expansion of 5G infrastructure and the use of AI to optimize network performance, T-Mobile maintains its position in the telecom industry.
By eliminating the data caps on Ultra customers, customers subscribed to the Ultra Unlimited and Ultra Unlimited+ plans would have access to high-speed data at no additional cost. Eliminating data caps could significantly boost T-Mobile’s customer growth by attracting new subscribers who value unlimited data usage without restrictions, especially high-data users such as those who stream, game, or work remotely, making T-Mobile a more attractive option than competitors with restrictive plans.
Aside from general data use, T-Mobile also announced “5G on Demand,” offering a cost-effective alternative to traditional infrastructure, appealing to businesses and organizations that need temporary but high-quality connectivity. Although this solution does not immediately attract new business customers and expand its user base, I find that this diversification into enterprise services is a positive step toward customer expansion. The outlook for long-term growth remains positive, driven by strategic investments in 5G technology and customer-centric services.
T-Mobile’s Postpaid Net Additions
T-Mobile’s Q3 2024 results highlight its leadership in customer growth, particularly in postpaid phone net additions, which are critical to its revenue base. The company added 865,000 postpaid phone customers in the quarter, marking the highest third-quarter growth in a decade.
In addition to postpaid phone growth, T-Mobile achieved a notable milestone in its broadband services, surpassing 6 million high-speed internet customers. With 415,000 net additions in Q3, the company continued to expand its footprint in the FWA market. FWA, which leverages 5G infrastructure to deliver internet services to homes and businesses, is a key growth area for T-Mobile as it diversifies beyond traditional wireless services.
How Customer Growth Affected T-Mobile’s Financials
T-Mobile’s strong customer growth is translating into robust financial performance. The company reported total service revenues of $16.7 billion for Q3 2024, a 5% increase year-over-year. Notably, postpaid service revenues grew by 8% to $13.3 billion, driven by increased postpaid phone customers.
T-Mobile’s profitability in its Q3 2024 results comes with net income growing by 43% year-over-year to $3.1 billion. This increase in profitability resulted in a diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.61, up from $1.82 in Q3 2023.
T-Mobile’s cash flow performance was another highlight of the quarter. The company reported net cash from operating activities of $6.1 billion, a 16% increase from the same period in 2023. Higher service revenues and improved working capital management drove this increased operating cash flow. Additionally, T-Mobile’s adjusted free cash flow reached $5.2 billion, representing a 29% year-over-year increase.
Demonstrating 5G Network Leadership
As a result of T-Mobile investing shrewdly in 5G technology to gain time-to-market advantages over rivals, the company augmented its competitive position by winning the “Best 5G Availability” award from Opensignal for the fourth consecutive year, providing customers with broad, reliable 5G coverage, essential for supporting the increasing demand for high-speed data services. The company’s 5G infrastructure, including expanding its Voice over New Radio (VoNR) coverage to over 300 million people, continues to burnish T-Mobile’s 5G ecosystem credentials.
The expansion of VoNR, which improves call quality and reduces latency, positions T-Mobile as a leader in next-generation wireless technology. As more mobile devices become compatible with VoNR, T-Mobile will be able to further enhance the customer experience, setting the stage for continued growth in both consumer and enterprise segments.
In addition to its 5G advancements, T-Mobile is leveraging AI to optimize network performance. The company’s AI-driven Customer-Driven-Coverage model uses real-time data to improve network reliability and customer satisfaction, allowing T-Mobile to prioritize network investments based on customer usage patterns, ensuring that resources are allocated where they are most needed. From my perspective, T-Mobile’s proactive approach to AI is refreshing its ability to maintain its 5G competitive edges against main rivals AT&T and Verizon.
T-Mobile and its key AI RAN partners, NVIDIA, Ericsson, and Nokia, are taking advantage of increased mobile ecosystem interest in AI RAN that is fueled heavily by the accelerating integration of AI throughout RAN portfolio development and deployments. This includes 5G sensors, which increasingly enable mobile network operators to improve RAN and overall mobile network efficiencies as well as augment overall network edge intelligence.
T-Mobile’s GenAI alliance with OpenAI combines its expertise in cultivating customer relationships with OpenAI’s AI technology knowledge and research & development experts to custom-build an innovative intent-driven AI-decisioning platform, called IntentCX. With secure access to T-Mobile data and its ability to comprehend customer intent and sentiment in real time, starting 2025, IntentCX will have the ability to apply meaningful understanding and knowledge of the customer to every interaction, offer solutions to resolve issues, and even take proactive actions on their behalf.
In my view, the alliance’s vision of an AI-RAN cloud-based multipurpose network, combined with T-Mobile’s vanguard ecosystem role, including the OpenAI alliance, has the potential to innovate both traditional telecommunications workloads, such as the core network and RAN, and AI workloads, including internal and external AI as a Service (AIaaS). Through enhanced capacity, energy efficiency, and improved resiliency, the AI-RAN platform can support voice, video, data, and new GenAI applications alongside having the capability to make contextual, AI-powered decisions regarding network performance and customer experience. AI-RAN can not only enable substantial cost savings and revenue growth for enterprises but also offer benefits that can be extended to various other businesses and industries.
Strategic Outlook and Guidance for 2024
Looking ahead, T-Mobile raised its guidance for the full year 2024 across critical financial and operational metrics, reflecting confidence in its ability to sustain growth and profitability. The company now expects postpaid net customer additions to be between 5.6 million and 5.8 million, up from its previous guidance of 5.4 million to 5.7 million. This increase underscores the continued demand for T-Mobile’s services, particularly in the postpaid segment.
In terms of financial guidance, T-Mobile raised its expectations for core adjusted EBITDA to a range of $31.6 billion to $31.8 billion, up from $31.5 billion to $31.8 billion. The company also raised its forecast for net cash provided by operating activities to a range of $22.0 billion to $22.3 billion, reflecting the strength of its cash flow generation.
These upward revisions demonstrate T-Mobile’s ability to execute its business strategy effectively, even in a competitive market environment. The company’s focus on customer growth, operational efficiency, and network leadership positions it well to continue delivering strong financial performance in the years ahead.
Looking Forward
Overall, T-Mobile had a successful quarter with a sharp focus on customer growth, supported by its expanded 5G capabilities and new services such as “5G on Demand.” By focusing on network performance improvements and customer-focused solutions, the company aims to increase customer acquisition while expanding its presence in broadband and IoT markets with a focus on balancing profitability and ongoing investment in emerging technologies.
Read the full press release on the company’s website.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
He is a recognized authority at tracking the evolution of and identifying the key disruptive trends within the service enablement ecosystem, including a wide range of topics across software and services, infrastructure, 5G communications, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics, security, cloud computing, revenue management, and regulatory issues.
Prior to his work with The Futurum Group, Ron worked with GlobalData Technology creating syndicated and custom research across a wide variety of technical fields. His work with Current Analysis focused on the broadband and service provider infrastructure markets.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
