AT&T Beats on Revenue, Misses on Earnings in Q4

Shares of AT&T

rallied slightly in Thursday's after-hours session following the company's fourth quarter earnings report. AT&T's fourth quarter earnings per share came in at $0.44, $0.01 less than the anticipated $0.45 estimate. Revenue was better than expected at $32.588 billion -- more than the $32.24 billion estimate. The telecom giant said that it sold 10.2 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, 89 percent of postpaid phone sales. Of these, 8.6 million were iPhones and 16 percent of these were new to AT&T. AT&T said it would complete its 300M buy back as early as the middle of this year. On the guidance front, AT&T said it expected about $129.98 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013, more than the $128.31 billion analysts anticipated. On the conference call, AT&T's management said that improvements to its network would allow the company to offer new services to subscribers going forward. AT&T's management said it did about 50 spectrum deals in the year, and hopes for a spectrum auction in 2015. AT&T said it would do more deals for airwaves this year. It said spectrum caps were less and less relevant. Even though the iPhone dominated AT&T's smartphone sales, the company said it had a record quarter for Android sales and that more Windows phones were coming. Shares of AT&T traded near $33.85 on Thursday.