Verizon posts best subscriber growth in five years, raises 2026 outlook, but shares slip on SpaceX fears

Verizon Communications, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, posted its strongest third-quarter subscriber growth in five years on Monday and raised its full-year profit outlook for the third straight quarter, even as investors stayed focused on a brewing competitive threat from Elon Musk's SpaceX. The company added 406,000 postpaid phone subscribers in the three months through September, more than eight times the total from a year earlier, plus 314,000 net broadband connections — 159,000 from fixed wireless access and 155,000 from fiber — pushing its total broadband base past 17.4 million, according to its quarterly earnings release. Total operating revenue reached $34.3 billion, up 1.5% from a year ago but slightly below Wall Street's roughly $34.9 billion estimate, while adjusted earnings per share of $1.31 topped analyst forecasts, the company disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Net income climbed 5.2% to $5.3 billion and free cash flow rose 12.1% to $7.8 billion. Adjusted EBITDA hit $13.8 billion, which Verizon called the highest quarterly figure in its history, with margins widening to 40.2% from 37.8% a year earlier.

On the strength of that growth, Verizon lifted its 2026 guidance across nearly every key metric. It now expects 1.1 million to 1.2 million postpaid phone net additions for the full year, up from the upper half of a previous 750,000-to-1-million range, and adjusted EPS growth of 7.0% to 7.5%, up from 6.0% to 7.0% previously. Free-cash-flow growth is now expected to approach 12%, roughly double the prior forecast, while planned capital spending of $16.0 billion to $16.5 billion was left unchanged. Chief executive Dan Schulman said the results showed the company was "fundamentally stronger — operationally, financially, and competitively" one year into a turnaround push; this marked the third straight quarter the company has raised its annual guidance. Separately, Verizon disclosed a new agreement worth more than $2 billion with Amazon Web Services that expands their existing partnership and sets a framework to scale distributed computing capacity for agentic and generative artificial-intelligence workloads, a sign telecom carriers are racing to position their networks and data centers for surging AI demand.

Despite the across-the-board beat, Verizon shares fell in early trading, down roughly 2.9% to about $43.37, a reaction that underscores how much pressure SpaceX's expansion into wireless service has put on the stock in recent weeks, a stretch during which shares had already been sliding heading into the report. SpaceX has reportedly been pursuing spectrum rights and infrastructure arrangements, including talks over tens of thousands of cell sites, that investors worry could erode the pricing power long enjoyed by incumbent carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. For a stock that has otherwise been among the better telecom performers this year, the muted market reaction shows that even record subscriber additions and a raised forecast are not enough to offset concern about a well-funded new entrant reshaping U.S. wireless competition.