ATandT Quarterly Profit Rises

NEW YORK (Reuters) – AT&T Inc on Thursday posted a higher quarterly profit after better-than-expectedwireless growth, sending its shares up almost 3 percent in pre-markettrading.

The company also affirmed its outlook for 2008.

The biggest U.S. telephone company said its fourth-quarter profitwas $3.1 billion, or 51 cents per share, compared with $1.9 billion, or50 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Most of the year-ago quarterexcludes earnings from BellSouth, which AT&T bought at the end of2006.

Before merger-related costs and other special items AT&T’sprofit rose to 71 cents a share from 61 cents in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue rose to $30.3 billion from $15.9 billion.

The results were in line with the average analyst forecast ofearnings per share of 71 cents before items, on revenue of $30.5billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

"We had an excellent fourth quarter, which affirms our outlook for2008," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a statement.

The company also approved a buyback of 400 million shares, or 6.6percent of its shares outstanding, and expects to complete thetransactions by the end of 2009.

AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple Inc’siPhone, said it added 2.7 million net wireless subscribers in thequarter compared with average estimates of 1.9 million from fouranalysts contacted by Reuters. Estimates ranged from 1.35 million to2.36 million.

The company said it maintained double-digit growth in revenue andsubscribers for its broadband business and saw subscribers to itsU-verse video service rise to 231,000 by the end of the quarter from126,000 the previous quarter. Stephenson said the company was on trackto reach more than 1 million U-verse subscribers by the end of 2008.

AT&T earlier this month said it was seeing some softness in itsconsumer business, which represents about 20 percent of the company’srevenue, but said this had less of an impact in wireless than inwireline services.

Shares in AT&T were up 2.9 percent to $37.60 in pre-market trade.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Michele Gershberg, editing by Mark Porter)

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