Article Directory
So, the quarterly ritual is complete. The great and powerful Verizon has spoken from on high, releasing a torrent of numbers and corporate-speak designed to soothe the nerves of Wall Street. And right on cue, the new CEO, Dan Schulman, stepped up to the podium to deliver a sermon on the company's glorious future.
I read his big quote, and I swear I could hear the faint, sad trombone in the background. “We will rapidly shift to a customer-first culture,” he proclaimed. “These will not be incremental changes. We will aggressively transform...”
Give me a break. I’ve heard this exact speech from every new CEO of every legacy behemoth for the last twenty years. It’s the corporate equivalent of a politician kissing a baby. It means nothing. It’s a placeholder for actual ideas. A "customer-first culture"? From a telecom giant? That’s like a shark promising to go vegan.
And you don’t even have to take my cynical word for it. Just look at their own damn numbers.
The "Customer-First" Shell Game
Let's dig into the one number Verizon probably hoped everyone would skim past. In the third quarter, in their main Consumer division, they reported a net loss of 7,000 postpaid phone customers.
Read that again. They didn't gain customers. They lost them. In the same quarter last year, they added 18,000. This isn't a slowdown; it's a reversal. I can almost picture the boardroom: a bunch of suits high-fiving over a PowerPoint slide showing a 2.9% revenue increase, while completely ignoring the flashing red light of 7,000 people who just walked out the door.
So how do you make more money while losing your core user base? Simple. You squeeze the ones who are still stuck with you. Average revenue per account (ARPA) is up 2.0 percent. Congratulations, Verizon. You've perfected the art of charging more for the same thing. This isn't growth. No, 'growth' is the wrong word—it’s a magic trick. It's financial engineering designed to make the line go up for one more quarter. But how long can that possibly last? At what point do you run out of loyal customers to nickel-and-dime into oblivion?
This is the central lie of modern telecom. They're trying to sell a story of a sleek tech innovator, but the engine is sputtering, and honestly... they're just a utility company with a marketing department. They’re like a landlord who owns a hundred aging apartment buildings. Instead of renovating the crumbling facades or fixing the leaky pipes, he just jacks up the rent by 5% every year on the tenants who haven't left yet and calls it a successful quarter. It works, for a while. But eventually, the whole damn thing starts to sag.
Drowning in Debt and Dividends
While the consumer phone business is leaking, the Verizon Business segment is actively sinking, with revenue down another 2.8 percent year-over-year. So, consumers are leaving and businesses are spending less. Where exactly is this "aggressive transformation" supposed to come from?
Their answer, as always, is the dividend. They proudly announced they've raised the dividend for the 19th consecutive year. Nineteen years. This isn't a badge of honor; it's a ball and chain. It tells you everything you need to know about their priorities. They are fundamentally a dividend stock for your grandpa’s retirement fund, not a growth company building the future.
That dividend payment is a promise they have to keep, a beast they have to feed every single quarter. And they’re feeding it while sitting on a mountain of $119.7 billion in unsecured debt. They’re servicing that massive debt, paying out billions to shareholders, and then the new CEO has the nerve to talk about "bold and fiscally responsible action"? Which is it? You can’t be bold and innovative when every spare dollar is already earmarked for debt payments and dividend checks. That ain't innovation, it’s a managed decline.
And offcourse Wall Street sees it. The analyst ratings are a sea of "Neutral" and "Hold." That’s finance-bro code for "We have no idea what this company is doing, but the dividend is nice, so don't sell it just yet." It's the definition of damning with faint praise. Maybe I'm the crazy one, but when the supposed experts are just shrugging their shoulders, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
So, We're Supposed to Be Impressed?
Let's be real. This Verizon Q3 2025: $33.8B revenue, wireless service up 2.1% earnings report isn't a story of a comeback. It’s the story of a giant treading water, hoping nobody notices how fast its legs are kicking just to stay afloat. All the grand pronouncements from the new guy in the corner office are just noise. It’s the same old song, just with a slightly different autotune. They’ll keep squeezing customers, keep paying the dividend, and keep pretending that incremental changes are a revolution. Don't buy the hype. The numbers, the real ones buried under the PR spin, tell the actual story. And it's a boring one.