Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Hans Vestberg : Yes. So it’s a multifaceted question on the fourth quarter. Of course, on the business-to-business side, SMBs continue very strong. And as I said, they need store digital storefront and a mobile-first strategy in today’s world after COVID. So I think that we have been performing very well. On the enterprise side, it’s a little bit different, but we see that bring your own device is going down, and we see more companies saying that they want the company phone, which is of course, helping us here. And that we — that trend we have seen for a couple of quarters. So I think both of them are pretty solid. On the consumer side, as I said, we had positive net debt. We had also, as I said before, a little bit speed lower from the churn from the price increase at the beginning of the quarter.

And then there was actually fewer days of sales in the fourth quarter than a normal quarter. So I don’t think there are any new things more than what I said. Customers were a little bit later in the holiday season to do. They had higher intent when it comes to consumers, but it was nothing macroeconomical different than I talked about. Matt and I talked about the bad debt and the delinquency being like pre-COVID or equal or better than pre-COVID. So no, there’s nothing there. We are, of course, watching it. But so far, we continue to progress well.

Matthew Ellis : Yes. Just to add on a couple of points. As you think about the VBG net adds, you’re always going to see a little bit of volatility up and down from 1 quarter to the next just because of the size of some of the transactions there. So all in all, though, jobs numbers continue to be good; business numbers, good. Obviously, there’s been some high-profile layoff announcements, but overall job numbers are good, and you see that show up in the overall numbers that we produced throughout the year and look forward to continuing to have best-in-class market share within the broadened business group space as we go forward. In terms of the macroeconomic assumptions in the guide, I wouldn’t say we have anything too dissimilar to what you’ve heard from a number of other people during earnings season.

But one of the things I come back to is the resiliency of our customer base. We’ve been through different types of economic environments in the past. We know customers pay their phone bills before they pay other bills and other outgoings. We fully expect that to continue. And so we’re obviously watching the macroeconomic environment. But as Hans said, the payment patterns continue to be very strong, and we’ll stay close to that, but so far, so good.

Brady Connor : Thanks, Brian. Brad, that’s all the time we have today.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using Verizon Conference Services. You may now disconnect.