‘SUBS’ HIT THE SKIDS

Verizon loses 307K

Verizon suffered its firstever quarterly loss of paying wireless subscribers — a grim milestone that could force it into some major deal-making.

Verizon said it lost 307,000 retail postpaid subscribers on a net basis in the first quarter — painfully different from the 222,000 new subscribers Wall Street had been expecting it to add, according to market research firm FactSet StreetAccount.

The surprise swing came despite Verizon relaunching an unlimited data plan in February. To make matters worse, the new, generous offer took a bite out of Verizon’s wireless revenue, sending it 5 percent lower, to $20.9 billion.

Shares of the No. 1 US wireless carrier closed down 1 percent Thursday, to $48.41.

Verizon is struggling to fend off smaller rivals T-Mobile and Sprint in a maturing market.

“They badly missed on every important subscriber metric, and it just underscores that the wireless business is a severely growth-challenged business at the moment,” Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, said in an interview.

Verizon’s core business is struggling even as Chief Executive Lowell McAdam said this week he was weighing merger partners, including Comcast.

In December, McAdamtold a group of Wall Street analysts it made “industrial sense” for his telecom to buy John Malone’s cable operation Charter Communications in what would be more than a $100 billion merger.

McAdam is obsessed with distribution, said a person familiar with his thinking.

Buying Charter would expand Verizon’s fixed footprint and add tech infrastructure for Verizon’s 5G mobile rollout, JPMorgan said in an analyst note.

Meanwhile, Verizon in recent weeks has been in the auction to buy Straight Path Communications, sources said. AT&T has the lead bid now, having reached a $1.25 billion agreement for the company, and Verizon may be considering a counter-proposal, sources speculated.

Straight Path’s spectrum matches well with the spectrum Verizon acquired earlier this year in its $1.7 billion acquisition of XO Communications. The XO spectrum will help it in deploying a 5G mobile network.

Wireless carriers are in a race to launch 5G service around 2020.

The company has also pursued revenue streams outside its core wireless business. In February, it said it would buy Yahoo’s core business for $4.48 billion, lowering its original offer by $350 million in the wake of two massive cyber-attacks at the internet company.

The deal brings to Verizon Yahoo’s more than 1 billion users along with a wealth of data it can use to offer more targeted advertising.

AT&T, Verizon’s main competitor, has sought to diversify its business through a planned acquisition of Time Warner.