United States Cellular Corporation reported service revenues of $996.3 million for the first quarter of 2013, versus $1,023.8 million for the comparable period one year ago. Net income attributable to U.S. Cellular shareholders and related diluted earnings per share were $4.9 million and $0.06 respectively, for the first quarter of 2013, compared to $62.5 million and $0.73, respectively, in the comparable period one year ago.
“We continued to expand our 4G LTE network and encourage customers to migrate, which has helped us further increase smartphone penetration and shift more customers to 4G LTE,” said Mary N. Dillon, U.S. Cellular president and CEO, in the press release. “We added new prepaid customers through our Walmart distribution. In our core markets, postpaid gross additions were relatively flat and elevated churn resulted in a net customer loss.”
“We have a number of strategies in progress to increase loyalty and attract more customers, including our announcement today that we will begin offering Apple products later this year,” Dillon said. “By further strengthening our device portfolio, we’ll give consumers another great reason to switch to U.S. Cellular, and enable our existing customers to choose from an even wider variety of iconic smartphones, and enjoy the outstanding U.S. Cellular customer experiences they deserve. Our smartphone penetration is currently 43 percent of core market customers and growing quickly. We believe there will be strong, ongoing demand for smartphones and data products and services from our customers, and we have significant room for growth in this area.”
“We’re supporting this growth by bringing 4G LTE to 87 percent of our customers in 2013, and increasing our network capacity,” Dillion aded. “In our core markets, 4G LTE smartphones were 76 percent of smartphones sold in the quarter, while smartphones overall were 62 percent of devices sold.”
Source: United States Cellular Corporation