New Verizon CEO Dan Schulman to overhaul strategy; “cost reductions will be a way of life”
Verizon’s 3Q2025 Results:
Verizon lost a net 7,000 postpaid phone connections in the 3rd quarter of 2025, missing expectations of adding 19,000. However, the company reported a profit of $5.06 billion, or $1.17 a share, compared with $3.41 billion, or 78 cents a share, a year earlier. Stripping out certain one-time items, adjusted per-share earnings were $1.21 a share, just ahead of the $1.19 a share that analysts had forecast, according to FactSet. Revenue ticked 1.5% higher to $33.82 billion vs Wall Street analysts expectation of $34.26 billion.
Wireless service revenue—Verizon’s largest business—rose 2.1% year-over-year to $21 billion. The company added 306,000 broadband connections, ending the latest quarter with more than 13.2 million connections. It has also added 261,000 new fixed-wireless access connections.
Broadband:
- Delivered 306,000 broadband net additions in third-quarter 2025.
- Total fixed wireless access net additions were 261,000 in third-quarter 2025, bringing the base to nearly 5.4 million fixed wireless access subscribers.
- Delivered 61,000 Fios internet net additions in third-quarter 2025, the best quarterly result in two years.
- Total broadband connections grew to more than 13.2 million as of the end of third-quarter 2025, representing a 11.1 percent increase year-over-year.
Forward Guidance: Verizon expects total wireless-service revenue growth of 2% to 2.8%, while adjusted per-share earnings are projected to rise 1% to 3%.
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Verizon’s New Strategy & Focus:
Dan Schulman was named CEO of Verizon on October 6, 2025, replacing former CEO Hans Vestberg. The new CEO plans to overhaul the company’s strategy, focusing on customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Schulman, who stepped into the CEO role earlier this month, said in a letter to employees that Verizon hasn’t been able to translate its years of heavy network investment into customer growth, especially amid fierce competition that has pressured pricing. Schulman attributed Verizon’s lagging performance to a strategy that relied too heavily on price increases without corresponding subscriber growth.
“Verizon has deep strengths and incredible potential, but the blunt truth is we haven’t captured the customer growth opportunities this strong foundation enables. “Our plan will not be about incremental change. We intend to aggressively transform the culture and financial profile of our company operating under the principles of being bold, customer centric and executing with financial discipline, with a focus on shareholder value,” he said.
Verizon will aim to fundamentally change its culture and cost structure to focus on customer satisfaction, operational efficiency and profitable expansion. Schulman plans to simplify offers and improve the customer experience, in part by leveraging artificial intelligence to tailor marketing and reduce costs. Verizon also intends to exit or streamline legacy businesses that don’t offer clear paths to profitability: “We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business,” Schulman said on the company’s earnings call.
Source: Jordi Boixareu
His assessment, is that while the #1 U.S. mobile operator by subscribers has been busy building out fiber and 5G, somewhere along the way it forgot about customers and has not been giving them good enough reasons to stay. “Despite investing significantly in network leadership, we have not been able to translate that into winning in the market, and, consequently, we are not generating the financial profile necessary for share price appreciation. Every year it gets harder to grow as we lap past price increases and experience higher churn. This cannot continue, and there is no question that meaningful change is needed,” Schulman said. “This is not a course correction, it is a fundamental change in our strategic approach to customers,” he said, noting that “raising rates without corresponding value rarely, if ever, delights customers.”
He stressed that attracting and retaining customers for the long-term will not come through “promotional activities” but rather a focus on and investment in value and customer experience to improve loyalty, “grow through retention,” and “make it much easier to do business with us.” Schulman’s goal is to have the lowest churn rate in the industry. “Verizon will no longer be the hunting ground for competitors looking to gain share,” he said. “We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business. This work is overdue and will be multi-year … Cost reductions will be a way of life for us,” he added.
As Verizon redirects investment to specific growth areas, it will also “aggressively” shut down or exit legacy businesses that are not profitable, which would “unleash margin improvement.” But as to which businesses he has in mind, more will be revealed at the operator’s next investment update in January 2026.
AI will be leveraged to “simply offers” and reduce churn “through smart, consistent and more personalized marketing,” while reducing cost and complexity across processes, he said. Verizon will continue to invest in growth areas – namely, its fiber build and C-band spectrum rollout. But it will also keep an eye out for other opportunities that might come along, noting that it has the financial flexibility in its balance sheet to do so. Schulman did not divulge what types of investments he might be interested in so we will have to wait till January for that information.
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In a research note published today, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said Schulman “described a shift towards being a customer-centric company, with the ‘best value proposition’ in the market. There is a clear focus on subscriber metrics. He called it a ‘full reboot.’ The obvious question is… how? Verizon is no longer perceived to have the best network. And it is perceived to have the highest prices. His promise to reverse subscriber losses without relying on promotions and price strikes us as more of a wish than a strategy.”
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References:
https://www.verizon.com/about/news/new-verizon-playing-to-win
https://www.verizon.com/about/investors/quarterly-reports/3q-2025-earnings-conference-call-webcast
https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/verizon-backs-outlook-as-profit-revenue-rise-f92e4a6c
https://www.lightreading.com/broadband/verizon-ceo-dan-schulman-calls-for-full-reboot-
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Verizon CEO wants ‘aggressive’ cuts after Vestberg culled 45k jobs, by Iain Morris, International Editor, Light Reading
“We will be a simpler, leaner and scrappier business,” Schulman said on the operator’s third-quarter earnings call, before sounding off about the wonders of artificial intelligence (AI), which he mentioned a dozen times in the full exchange with analysts.
“AI can obviously be used to be more efficient, to do things and satisfy customers in ways that we can’t do today and do so at a much lower cost,” he said. A scrappier Verizon, to Schulman, is seemingly one that’s been shredded by cost cuts into a fat-free and much nimbler form, helped partly by AI. His plans include “aggressively reducing our cost base,” he emphasized.
Under Hans Vestberg, Schulman’s predecessor, Verizon’s headcount shrank by 44,900 employees between 2018 and 2024, about 31% of the earlier total. Since 2015, the number has plummeted by 78,100. All this carnage has still not apparently produced the lean machine that Schulman, who has been the top independent director on Verizon’s board since 2018, wants to see.
In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told workers in a memo that AI would mean “fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today.” This week, AI was mentioned again when Amazon revealed plans to cut 14,000 corporate roles.
“Over the last year, we’ve reduced our headcount by some 6,000, leveraging new ways of working, and that of course includes AI,” said Börje Ekholm, Ericsson’s CEO, during his quarterly earnings call with analysts earlier this month.
“We are just scratching the surface of how we use AI inside Verizon,” said Schulman, before claiming to have a “keen understanding” of where it’s going (that makes one person, at least). “I think AI is the only technology I’ve seen in my lifetime where it does a step function improvement every two to three months. The models that we have today are by far and away the worst models we’re ever going to have.”
“Global labor opex, a $300 billion ticket, was down by an unexciting 2.2% in 2024,” said Dario Talmesio, global research director at Omdia, referring to a tracker that monitors opex levels across the telco industry. “Given the amount of job losses in the sector, we wonder if AI costs more than the job it replaces.”
Verizon job cuts are not unique among US telcos. Job cuts have similarly torn through AT&T, whose workforce has almost halved since the start of 2018, to 141,000 employees at the end of last year. Unlike Verizon, AT&T has quit expensively acquired TV businesses over this period, explaining a good chunk of the reduction. But its headcount has continued to fall. So far this year, another 5,300 jobs have disappeared from the total, about 4% of the end-2024 amount.
Schulman’s suggestion that Verizon has only been “scratching the surface” with AI so far, and his talk of even more aggressive cuts, will not boost morale at a company whose workforce is already just a fraction of its former size. But Schulman’s main duty, of course, is to the shareholders looking at the expenses column and the bottom line. Staff reductions so far have done little to please them. A new AI-led wave that fails to shrink the bill would leave no one very happy.
https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/verizon-ceo-wants-aggressive-cuts-after-vestberg-culled-45k-jobs
Verizon reportedly plans to lay off around 15,000 employees under new CEO Dan Schulman’s cost reduction plans. The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the plans, said the headcount reduction program is due to start in the next week with most of the job losses coming from layoffs and some from franchising approximately 180 retail stores it owns. According to a Reuters source, the cuts would shrink “non-union management” roles by more than 20%.
Verizon also plans to transition about 200 stores into franchised operations, which will shift employees off its payroll, one of the people said.
The company had about 100,000 employees as of February, according to securities filings.
Verizon, the largest U.S. telecommunications provider by subscriber base, faces a fierce battle in both wireless and home internet markets. It has lost crucial postpaid phone subscribers for three consecutive quarters, as other wireless companies pick off customers. In April, it began offering a price-lock guarantee for a swath of customers, though competitors have also since pushed similar promotions.
In the most recent quarter, Verizon lost a net 7,000 consumer postpaid phone connections, while Wall Street analysts had forecast a gain of 19,000. AT&T and T-Mobile have both been growing postpaid subscriber counts.
Last month, Verizon named its lead independent director Daniel Schulman as its new chief executive officer. Schulman, a former CEO of PayPal and Virgin Mobile USA, has said he would aggressively reduce the company’s entire cost base and take steps to reverse the customer losses.
“Verizon is at a critical inflection point,” he said last month in a call discussing the company’s third-quarter results.
The company has said it plans to exit or streamline legacy businesses that don’t offer clear paths to profitability, and will look to be a more nimble organization.
“We have a tremendous amount of opportunity to be more efficient, to be scrappier,” Schulman said. “Cost reductions will be a way of life for us here.”
Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in an October note that delivering Schulman’s vision in a mature U.S. telecom market would “not be easy or quick.” They said it is “possible—if not probable—that Verizon can improve operating and financial performance over time while remaining a rational actor in the marketplace.”
Verizon joins a wave of companies slimming down, with some finding tech-driven ways of improving efficiencies. Corporate giants including Amazon.com, United Parcel Service and Target have all announced job cuts in recent weeks.
https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/verizon-to-cut-about-15-000-jobs-87280c3c?st=Tf6qSY&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink