Verizon added 406,000 postpaid phone customers in the third quarter, its strongest Q3 for new phone customers in five years, and raised its full-year forecast for the third straight quarter. The company reported the numbers Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The results land as SpaceX tries to push into mobile service, a move that has already weighed on telecom stocks.
The numbers
The phone customer gain was up more than 820% from the same quarter last year, when Verizon struggled with weak customer growth. Over the first nine months of 2026, the company signed up nearly 1.7 million mobile and broadband subscribers, compared with 879,000 in the same period of 2025.
Earnings per share came in at $1.25, up 6.8% from a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were $1.31 a share, up 8.3%. Mobility and broadband service revenue rose 2.9% to $23.5 billion, and Verizon expects growth of about 4% in the fourth quarter. Operating cash flow reached $11.5 billion for the quarter.
A $2 billion AI deal with Amazon
Verizon also said it is expanding its partnership with Amazon Web Services in an AI infrastructure agreement worth more than $2 billion. The company did not give details on the terms in its release summary. Before the earnings report, a preview noted that Verizon’s AI-related revenue was not part of its 2026 forecast and that the company expected the first meaningful impact in 2027.
Why the quarter matters
Analysts going into the report watched subscriber growth, churn and free cash flow more than earnings per share. Churn, the share of customers who leave, had fallen to 0.84% in the second quarter, and Verizon has been trying to win back customers through simpler plans and new bundles of mobile and home internet.
The competitive backdrop is shifting. SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile service threatens to take customers from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, which pushed shares of all three lower earlier this month, as we noted in our report on SpaceX’s first profit as a public company. A strong quarter does not make that threat go away.
Verizon has not said how much it plans to raise its full-year targets for phone customer growth, adjusted earnings and free cash flow in the filing summary.
