- Verizon managed to increase its phone net adds by 616,000 in Q4 2025
- But financial metrics like ARPU and churn were weaker
- CEO Dan Schulman hinted of a new “value proposition” that’s expected to debut the first half of 2026
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman was able to show progress in his turn-around plan – adding 616,000 postpaid phone net additions in the fourth quarter of 2025, marking the best quarter of postpaid phone net adds since 2019.
And he’s only getting started, because he teased a new “value proposition” that’s due to launch in the first half of this year – one that’s woefully short on details, but rest assured, they’re doing their due diligence to make sure it’s a winner. More on that later.
Importantly, Verizon isn’t going to rely on price increases to boost its bottom line – unless the price increases are tied to added value – and it’s not going to get into any crazy price wars, either, according to Schulman.
“Our goal over time is to … win responsibly in a manner that sustainably grows our top line and allows us to drive shareholder value,” he said during today’s earnings call. “I think you're going to see a combination of us spending a lot to improve our overall value proposition, leveraging convergence, seeing churn go down, and then being appropriately aggressive where we need to in the market.”
Schulman said his turn-around plan is already taking shape, having reduced headcount by 13,000 in November and removing layers of hierarchy. However, they’re still in the early stages of the transformation – one that started with the ouster of former CEO Hans Vestberg and arrival of Schulman as CEO in October.
“We are creating a new Verizon, one that does not settle for anything less than being the best,” he said in prepared remarks. “There’s no question that Verizon is at a critical inflection point, and there is no doubt that we must radically shift our culture towards the goal of delighting our customers and building a brand that stands for trust so that we can deliver for our shareholders.”
At the start of today’s earnings call, he acknowledged the network outage that affected customers earlier this month. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week opened an inquiry asking the public for comments related to the outage.
“We let our customers down,” he said. “The Verizon brand was built on superior network quality and reliability and I’m committed to relentlessly working to deliver the service that our customers expect.”
Verizon did manage to keep it together during this past week’s winter storm Fern that saw snow and ice blanket everyone from Texas to Maine, and he gave props to the technicians and retail teams who kept customers connected.
“We maintained seamless connectivity across the most heavily impacted regions,” he said.
CEO: A new ‘value proposition’ is coming
As for the new “value proposition” that’s coming later this year, he said Verizon is in “deep market research” with a very sophisticated analysis that’s providing detailed customer feedback, projected market dynamics and associated financial and operational metrics.
But he’s not letting competitors or investors know exactly what’s up. “We are not going to show our hand until the day we launch,” he said, adding that they’re going to be eliminating “the things customers hate” and removing pain points to make it easier to do business with Verizon.
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As he indicated in the last earnings call, AI is playing a big role in all of this. “We will use AI to optimize our operations and fundamentally reshape the customer experience,” he said, noting that eventually, “every individual customer will have a tailored proposition.”
Verizon's net adds up; ARPU down
Investors appeared to be pleased with the direction Schulman is headed, driving up Verizon shares more than 10% at one point this morning, to $43.90.
Of course, not everyone is impressed. Yes, postpaid phone net adds were better than expected in Q4, but ARPU, margins and EBITDA were worse, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said in a report for investors this morning.
“By and large, Schulman’s first quarter as CEO delivered precisely what he promised. Unit metrics improved. Financial metrics weakened,” Moffett said.
Postpaid ARPU of $46.58 was 1.8% below what most analysts expected, which was 1.0% year over year. Instead, “we got a 0.8% decline. ARPU growth hasn’t been negative since 2023. Sequentially, ARPU fell 0.9%.”
LightShed Parters analyst Walter Piecyk summed it up on social media: “Verizon EBITDA declines for first time in 2 years, post-paid phone rev declines accelerate, churn worsens but they got those net subscriber adds! #SchulmanEffect”
Another big question mark: convergence. It remains to be seen how much convergence shows up in Verizon’s playbook now that it’s closed its acquisition of Frontier.
AT&T has made convergence the cornerstone of its strategy. “Will Verizon follow? How committed to Frontier’s fiber-at-all-costs strategy will Schulman be at a time when his primary objectives are to fix wireless net adds by giving existing subscribers new phones?” Moffett asked.
Bits and bytes
Verizon's wireless service revenue was $21 billion in Q4 2025, a 1.1% year-over-year increase.
Wireless retail postpaid phone churn ticked up, to 0.95% in Q4 2025 compared to 0.88% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Total fixed wireless access (FWA) net additions were 319,000, bringing the total base to more than 5.7 million FWA subscribers. Earlier this week, AT&T reported that it added 221,000 new customers in Q4 for its FWA offering, AT&T Internet Air.
Verizon’s capex is expected to be $16.0 billion to $16.5 billion in 2026, which includes a fiber build pace of at least 2 million passings.
Verizon’s C-band buildout is roughly 90% complete and covers about 300 million people. The remaining C-band additions are mostly on small cells, where lower capex is required, according to CFO Tony Skiadas.
This article was updated to correct AT&T's FWA net adds in Q4 2025.