From Bloomberg.com:
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — Verizon Communications Inc., coping with subscriber losses at its fixed-line phone business, plans to cut about 13,000 jobs at the division this year after posting fourth-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ estimates.
The cuts will follow reductions of a similar size last year, Chief Financial Officer John Killian said on a conference call today. This year’s eliminations equal to 11 percent of the staff at the unit, which had about 117,000 workers at year-end.
Sales rose 9.9 percent to $27.1 billion, missing the $27.3 billion average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Fixed-line revenue fell 3.9 percent, muting mobile-customer gains that beat some analysts’ projections. High unemployment hurt sales to companies and damped growth at Verizon’s FiOS Internet and TV service, said Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Christopher King.
“The economy, first and foremost, we really see no signs of improvement there,” said Baltimore-based King, who advises investors to buy the shares and doesn’t own any. “I would have expected to see a little bit more signs of stabilization in the fourth quarter.”
Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, fell 69 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $29.99 at 11:27 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The New York-based company’s stock declined 2.3 percent last year.
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