Verizon reported a net gain of 406,000 postpaid phones for the third quarter today, an increase of more than 820% from a year earlier, and raised its 2026 outlook. The company also gained 137,000 postpaid accounts on a net basis, its strongest account growth in more than a decade. Its revised annual guidance includes higher expectations for postpaid phone net additions, Adjusted EPS and free cash flow.
The subscriber gains came alongside a 9% annual decline in equipment revenue, limiting growth in total operating revenue to 1.5%, bringing the quarterly figure to $34.3 billion. Verizon attributed the equipment decline mainly to fewer upgrades as customers held onto phones longer, alongside its decision to spend less on device subsidies. Revenue from mobility and broadband services reached approximately $23.5 billion, growing 2.9% from a year earlier.
Verizon's overall postpaid phone churn rate fell to 0.94%, improving by four basis points from the same quarter last year. For its Consumer business, postpaid phone churn reached 0.87%, also an improvement of four basis points. The company reported that promotional acquisition costs dropped 41% from a year earlier, while promotional retention costs improved by 30%.
Broadband added 314,000 connections on a net basis during the quarter, with fiber contributing 155,000 and fixed wireless access accounting for 159,000. Verizon's broadband connection count reached 17.4 million, and more than half of new fiber customers selected download speeds of at least 1 gigabit. Across mobility and broadband, subscriber gains approached 1.7 million during the first nine months of 2026, compared with 879,000 a year earlier.
Quarterly net income rose 5.2% to $5.3 billion, while earnings per share increased to $1.25 from $1.17 a year earlier. Adjusted EPS, which excludes special items, reached $1.31, compared with $1.21. Operating cash flow increased 2.2% to $11.5 billion for the quarter, and free cash flow rose 12.1% to $7.8 billion.
Verizon forecasts approximately 4% growth in mobility and broadband service revenue for the fourth quarter. It also expects to surpass 32 million total fiber passings by year-end, and is targeting 40 million to 50 million in the medium term. Separately, Verizon signed an agreement worth more than $2 billion with AWS to establish a commercial framework for distributed computing serving agentic and generative AI workloads.
