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Verizon beat earnings expectations for the fourth quarter. Verizon Business CEO Tami Erwin joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss.
Video transcript
– Shares of our parent company, Verizon Communications, slipped in the session, down about 8/10 percent, continuing the decline we saw yesterday on the back of the company’s earnings report. With growth in the number of wireless subscribers falling below analysts’ expectations, certainly a disappointment for investors. But that was overshadowed a bit by a massive outage we saw early in the morning on the East Coast, which caused major disruption with so many people working from home.
Let’s bring in Tami Erwin. She is the CEO of Verizon Business. Tami, it’s great talking to you today. I wonder if we can start with these disruptions. So many of us went through this yesterday because so much of our lives are online now. Definitely not – Verizon isn’t the only company to be affected. We also saw Google, Zoom, YouTube, Slack, and then Amazon Web Services. What more have we learned? Can you give us more information on what specifically happened?
TAMI ERWIN: Yeah. I think we saw two very unique things in the Northeast yesterday. We saw a huge internet problem that degraded services for about an hour in the Northeast. The emphasis was on catering. The teams are working collectively in all areas to now understand the root cause of this problem. In parallel, we also had a cable, a Fios cut by a tree falling on a cable, so two things that worked in parallel. Our goal is always catering because we understand the importance of how much people depend on this internet connection. And then we’ll work on the root cause, to make sure we avoid that in the future.
ZACK GUZMAN: Tami, can I also get an update? What we got in the results report here was sort of a continued push for Verizon’s efforts in the 5G space. I know you, on the business side, you’ve looked – you’ve looked at the companies and what they’re planning to do to take advantage of this 5G rollout. What have you heard from people looking forward to this for maybe, uh, I guess boost their recovery that we’ve seen play out here in 2021? What catches your eye?
TAMI ERWIN: Yeah, Zack, thanks. This is a really exciting time for businesses, as they watch how their businesses react, react, recover and reinvent their businesses in a 2021 timeframe, as COVID exits, in the face of some of the economic challenges that businesses are seeing? 5G will play a very important role in terms of reinvention and delivery of solutions, operational efficiency and new revenues.
You know, we just finished a study that we did that was really an important study. Morning Consult has worked with us. We spoke to 700 key decision makers in businesses and 79% said 5G was part of their stimulus package. 50% of users said they plan to put 5G devices in the hands of their users because they understand the power of this expansion. And they see this as a key differentiator in terms of recovery plans. I think Verizon is very well positioned. We led the world in our launch of 5G mobility, 5G fixed wireless access, and then, of course, for business customers, the 5G mobile edge compute, getting 10 locations with AWS per year. last, then the private mobile edge calculation with Microsoft and Azure. Truly powerful solutions that put control in the hands of businesses as they rebuild and recover from COVID with technology at the heart of what they do.
– Tami, let’s talk about what we saw in your wireless business, because I think that’s what kind of prompted – the – the slide that we saw in the stock yesterday. You added that 3,000 subscribers. But it was way below what Wall Street expected. Today we take a look at AT&T. Their number, clearly higher than expected. How much of their growth has come at the expense of Verizon? And how much of a dent in your business there from those promotions from AT&T and T-Mobile?
TAMI ERWIN: Yeah. When I look at the momentum of our B2B practice and our B2B business, I am really excited about the growth we have experienced and continue to see. We lead in each of the segments we serve. You might remember a year and a half ago when we configured – reset Verizon to a Verizon 2.0 model to serve small businesses, global businesses, and public sector customers. We did this in the hope that we could offer them end-to-end solutions. And this ability to do so has enabled us to generate strong growth in B2B throughout 2020. And we are very well positioned in 2021.
You know, it is – COVID has had a very different impact on businesses. In small businesses, we know they have seen the most direct impact of COVID. And so, how we present ourselves not only with basic connectivity, but also security and advanced communication capabilities, video and collaboration has been very important. How we support them in their recovery has been important. And then when you look at the public sector, it’s a segment that we’ve worked very closely with, and seen good growth, and we anticipate continued growth, that’s how let’s reinvent education, something that we are all trying to learn to live. . We played a central role in it.
And then in the global business, there are a lot of companies that are reinventing the way they put the power of 5G in the hands of – of their employees and really transform the work environment, as we reinvent the company of the future. And we are well positioned to continue to generate strong growth in our overall wireless services portfolio, continuing to take part as an industry leader in the segments we serve today.
ZACK GUZMAN: Well, some pretty high infrastructure targets are planned ahead of time in the incoming administration here. It’s interesting to see how 5G might play a role in this regard, not only for Verizon, but for all other networks as well. But Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business, thanks you for coming here to chat with us today.
TAMI ERWIN: Thank you so much. Be well.
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