T-Mobile Posts Strong Gains in Wireless Customers, Raises Outlook

Investors and analysts track postpaid phone customers to gauge wireless-company health because it measures trends among reliable monthly bill-payers.

AT&T Inc.

added 813,000 postpaid phone customers, though it warned that some subscribers were falling behind on their monthly bills.

Verizon Communications Inc.,

the largest in the industry, added 12,000 net postpaid phone connections. The two companies reported earnings last week.

AT&T and Verizon raised prices for consumers near the end of the latest quarter.

T-Mobile still swung to a $108 million loss in the second quarter, or 9 cents a share, from a profit of $978 million, or 78 cents, a year earlier. The reported loss included about $477 million of network-related costs and a $400 million charge to settle class-action lawsuits over the 2021 theft of data on millions of current, former and potential customers.

Overall revenue fell 1.2% to $19.7 billion.

The company raised its guidance for the year, saying it expects net postpaid customer additions of between six million and 6.3 million, up from its earlier projection of 5.3 million to 5.8 million. It also slightly revised upward its free cash flow target to between $7.3 billion and $7.6 billion.

T-Mobile shares rose more than 3% in premarket trading to $138.50.

—Drew FitzGerald contributed to this article.

Write to Alex Harring at [email protected]