Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) disclosed its third-quarter earnings results Tuesday morning, with revenue coming in just shy of expectations and sending shares retreating 4% so far. Here’s how the company performed relative to the analyst consensus:
- Earnings per share: $1.19 per share, just ahead of the $1.18 per share estimate.
- Revenue: $33.3 billion, narrowly missing the $33.5 billion estimate.’
The revenue miss was a bit of a disappointment, and part of this can be attributed to wireless service revenue showing just 2.7% growth to $19.8 billion. This is down from the 3.5% growth shown this time last year.
Verizon says high interest rates are taking their toll, as customers are spending less on phone upgrades. But, 239,000 new subscribers were added in the third quarter, well ahead of the expectation of 218,000.
These postpaid phone subscribers spend the most with Verizon since they’re billed monthly. This was the first time the company showed positive subscriber growth here in nearly 4 years.
For some time now there has been stagnation in the US wireless market, pushing Verizon (and its competitors) to narrow focus towards high-speed internet services.
The goal for Verizon is to achieve 8 million to 9 million subscribers in this segment over the next 4 years, which would be more than double where that figure sits today.
It just hit its goal of 4 million to 5 million users after adding 363,000 customers in Q3, something it wasn’t expecting to do until 2026.
Verizon made it clear that it’s willing to invest to reach its goals, forecasting capital spending between $17.5 billion and $18.5 billion for 2025. That’s well above the 2024 cap ex forecast.
Despite moving slightly lower this morning, VZ is still up 4% over the past 3 months and more than 10% through 2024 thus far. The stock reached a low point right around this time last year, and has rebounded strong since.
So, where does this leave current investors or those looking to trade VZ? Does today’s 4% loss present a buying opportunity? We’ve taken a closer look at VZ in the VectorVest stock forecasting software and found 3 things you need to consider.
VZ Has Fair Upside Potential, Safety, and Timing Right Now
VectorVest is a proprietary stock rating system that distills complex technical indicators and fundamental data into clear, actionable insights, saving you time and stress while empowering you to win more trades.
The ratings are relative value (RV), relative safety (RS), and relative timing (RT). Each sits on a scale of 0.00-2.00 with 1.00 being the average. This makes interpretation quick and easy.
You’re even offered a buy, sell, or hold recommendation based on the overall VST rating for any given stock at any given time, completely eliminating human error, emotion, and guesswork. Here’s what we found for VZ:
- Fair Upside Potential: The RV rating compares a stock’s long-term price appreciation potential (forecasted 3 years out), AAA corporate bond rates, and risk. It’s a much better indicator than the typical comparison of price to value alone. VZ has a fair RV rating of 0.97. The stock is slightly overvalued, with a current value of just $36.97.
- Fair Safety: The RS rating is a risk indicator computed from an analysis of the company’s financial consistency & predictability, debt-to-equity ratio, business longevity, sales volume, price volatility, and other factors. The RS rating of 0.90 is also fair for VZ.
- Fair Timing: The RT rating is based on the direction, dynamics, and magnitude of the stock’s price movement. It’s calculated day over day, week over week, quarter over quarter, and year over year. The RT rating of 0.94 is fair for VZ as well.
The overall VST rating of 0.94 is fair and earns VZ a HOLD recommendation in the VectorVest system. Dig deeper with this free stock analysis today so that when the time is right you can capitalize to the fullest on this trade!
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Use VectorVest to analyze any stock free. VectorVest is the only stock analysis tool and portfolio management system that analyzes, ranks and graphs over 18,000 stocks each day for value, safety, and timing and gives a clear buy, sell or hold rating on every stock, every day.
VectorVest advocates buying safe, undervalued stocks, rising in price. VZ is down a bit today after less-than-impressive Q3 results. That being said, the stock still has fair upside potential, safety, and timing.
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