AT&T (T) managed to know elevated momentum from shoppers in the course of the first few months of this yr, regardless of lately scaling again an important low cost.
In its first-quarter earnings report for 2025, AT&T revealed that it generated a internet earnings of $4.7 billion in the course of the quarter, which is nineteen% larger than what it earned throughout the identical quarter in 2024.
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AT&T additionally added 324,000 new postpaid cellphone clients and 261,000 new Fiber web clients in the course of the first few months of the yr.
Associated: AT&T quietly points stern warning to clients
These outcomes come after AT&T quietly warned clients final month that beginning on April 24, their autopay low cost will lower from $10 to $5 in the event that they pay their month-to-month invoice with a debit card. This transfer pissed off clients, with some even threatening to change cellphone suppliers.
Whereas AT&T is going through elevated earnings, the cellphone provider is sounding the alarm on the potential influence of a rising menace.
On April 2, President Donald Trump raised eyebrows throughout the nation when he introduced a ten% “baseline” tariff on all international locations importing items to the U.S., with roughly 60 international locations seeing larger tariff charges.
Tariffs are taxes corporations pay to import items from abroad, and the additional value is usually handed all the way down to shoppers via value hikes.
Nonetheless, on April 9, he switched gears and enforced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on all international locations (besides China), dropping them to a common charge of 10%. He additionally unexpectedly hiked tariffs on China to 145%.
Associated: Verizon suffers main loss as clients change gears
Throughout an earnings name on April 23, AT&T CEO John Stankey mentioned that tariffs can have a detrimental influence on various units the corporate sells.
“The introduced tariffs might doubtlessly enhance the price of smartphones and different units, in addition to the price of community and technical gear,” mentioned Stankey. “The magnitude of any enhance will rely upon quite a lot of elements, together with how a lot of the tariffs our distributors cross on, and the influence that the tariffs have on shopper and enterprise demand.”
He additionally warned that AT&T could should hike costs for its units attributable to Trump’s tariffs.
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“So I believe that if finally prices are handed to us from those who we purchase handsets from, sadly for the shopper, we’re going to should provide you with some new methods for them to determine digest that enhance in pricing,” mentioned Stankey.
