T AT&T Inc

   By Austen Hufford and Drew FitzGerald 
 

AT&T Inc. posted another quarter of declining revenue as growth in the company's streaming video service wasn't enough to offset falls in wireless services and television revenue.

The company's streaming DirecTV Now service added 312,000 subscribers to reach nearly 1.5 million in the first quarter. The new additions were enough to cover the 188,000 satellite-TV customers it lost.

In the fourth quarter, AT&T lost 207,000 traditional pay-TV customers and netted 368,000 DirecTV Now subscribers.

The company said it lost 22,000 so-called "post-paid" phone customers in the quarter, who pay monthly bills for cell-phone service. Wall Street analysts expect the company to give back 68,000 postpaid phone accounts, according to Wells Fargo. Verizon on Tuesday said it lost 24,000 of those valuable phone accounts in the first quarter.

It added 192,000 prepaid customers, who are those that buy phones loaded with data and call minutes ahead of time.

Investors are also closely following AT&T's continued defense of its $85 billion Time Warner acquisition. The U.S. Department of Justice is challenging the deal on antitrust grounds. The trial is almost over, with closing arguments expected next week and a federal judge ruling weeks later. The company continues to spend on the potential deal, with Time Warner and other merger costs totaling $67 million in the quarter.

The company adopted some new accounting standards that affected revenue in the quarter. Under the new rules, AT&T consolidated revenue for the first quarter came in at $38.04 billion, below the $39.37 billion in the year-ago quarter. On a comparable basis, revenue fell 1.1% to $38.9 billion.

Net income in the first quarter was $4.7 billion, or 75 cents a share share, compared to $3.5 billion, or 56 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

Adjusted for an actuarial gain and merger-related costs, adjusted profit was 85 cents, compared to analyst expectations of 87 cents a share.

Shares fell 3.3% to $34.09 in after-hours trading.

Write to Austen Hufford at Austen.Hufford@wsj.com and Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 25, 2018 16:55 ET (20:55 GMT)

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