AT&T, Allied with Apple, Vanquishes Rival Sprint in Battle for Wireless Marketshare

(NewsVisual, powered by IntellectSpace) -- As if to complete the symmetry of last week’s bad-news announcement from Sprint Nextel Corp (NYSE: S), AT&T Inc (NYSE:T) issued its own good-news fourth-quarter earnings announcement on Thursday that made clear to investors that it is the winner against its rival in the competitive struggle for wireless-telecom marketshare

Specifically, it claimed a record 2.7 million new customers in the quarter, the company said in the statement.

While AT&T's reported fourth-quarter revenues totaled $30.3 billion, the company reported net income for the fourth quarter totaled $3.1 billion in 2007 compared with $1.9 billion in 2006, or $0.51 per diluted share compared to $0.50 per diluted share, respectively.

AT&T’s positive earnings statement reflected the uptick in new wireless subscribers, with a 16.3 percent increase in total wireless revenues.

Apple Corp’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone sales seem to have played a major role in AT&T’s wireless growth, since iPhone customers must use the latter as its telecom carrier.

While the specific numbers were unavailable from AT&T, Apple reported in its January 22 press release that it sold 2,315,000 iPhones in the same quarter.  Obviously,   AT&T indirectly benefited from those sales, since approximately only 400,000 of its new subscribers did not come with new iPhones in their hands.

In addition, beyond AT&Ts record wireless gains, its enterprise services, broadband revenues, and TV services all experienced growth.

“We had an excellent fourth quarter, which affirms our outlook for 2008,” said AT&T CEO/President/Chairman Randall Stephenson in the company’s statement.

“Our wireless business delivered outstanding results, with the largest quarterly subscriber gain ever posted by a U.S. provider,” he added.

Despite AT&T’s positive earnings statement, the company’s share price was down from the previous close of $36.69 to $36.33 in late morning trading (11:54am ET).

NewsVisual decided to create an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map in order to illustrate the business connections of AT&T’s Board of Directors as a method for assessing their knowledge of business and for determining the likelihood that its Management Team would benefit from the former’s advice.

The Knowledge Map shows that most AT&T Directors have involvement with other companies and that eight of them sit on three corporate boards or more, including the following examples:

Director Jon C Madonna also sits on the boards of Freeport-McMoRan Cooper & Gold Inc, Jazz Technologies Inc and Tidewater Inc; Director William F Aldinger III is the CEO/President/Director of the Capmark Financial Group Inc and a board member of KKR Financial Corp and Charles Schwab Corp; and Director Mary S Metz serves on the boards of Longs Drug Stores Corp, Pacific Gas and Electric Co, and UnionBanCal Corp.

(Note: the information contained and presented in Knowledge Maps is public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America).

Click here or copy this link into your Internet Explorer browser for an interactive version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map: http://nv.intellectspace.com/ispace/GuestMonitor.aspx?id=79c76549-df08-42d0-a8e7-c4398e038f2e