Verizon Raises Earnings Outlook as Quarterly Postpaid Subscribers Surge; Announces AI Infrastructure Deal With AWS

10:14 AM EDT, 10/26/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Verizon Communications (VZ) raised its full-year earnings outlook on Monday after reporting an 820% year-over-year surge in third-quarter postpaid phone net additions, while the company announced an artificial intelligence infrastructure deal worth more than $2 billion with Amazon's (AMZN) cloud computing unit. The telecommunications giant now expects adjusted earnings of $5.04 to $5.06 per share for 2026, representing annual growth of 7% to 7.5%, up from its previous forecast of $4.99 to $5.04 per share, or growth of 6% to 7%. The consensus on FactSet is for non-GAAP EPS of $5. For the quarter ended September, the firm added 406,000 retail postpaid phone subscribers, up from 44,000 additions in the prior-year period. The average consensus among nine analysts on FactSet was for 195,300 subscriber additions. The company saw "broad based" improvement across its consumer and business segments, Chief Financial Officer Tony Skiadas said during an earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript. "Continuing our momentum from the third quarter, we also expect to have positive account growth in the fourth quarter." UBS Securities said in a September client note that it expected the company to add 240,000 postpaid phone subscribers in the third quarter, driven by 0.93% churn and 3% gross add growth. Verizon now expects this year's postpaid phone net adds to be in a range of 1.1 million to 1.2 million, compared with its prior guidance for the metric to come in the upper half of 750,000 to 1 million, representing an increase of more than three times versus 2025. The Street is currently looking for 975,000 additions. The company said it expanded its partnership with Amazon Web Services by finalizing a deal of more than $2 billion to scale distributed compute and meet real-time demands of agentic and generative AI workloads. Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment by MT Newswires on the transaction. In November 2025, the companies announced a partnership to build high-capacity, low-latency network infrastructure. In July, Verizon signed a deal worth over $1 billion to allow Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) to use its dark fiber connectivity for Google's data centers. "We now have an active pipeline of additional hyperscalers, neo cloud providers, and large enterprise clients who are in negotiations to have us supply them with either dark or lit fiber connectivity," Chief Executive Dan Schulman said on the call. "We now have signed contracts for approximately $4 billion, and based on the demand we are seeing, we expect both our fiber and edge computing to add meaningfully to our future growth." Verizon reported adjusted EPS of $1.31 for the third quarter, up from $1.21 the year before, ahead of the Street's view for $1.27. Operating revenue ticked up 1.5% to $34.31 billion, but fell short of the market's consensus of $34.77 billion. Mobility and broadband service revenue rose 2.9% to roughly $23.5 billion. Service and other revenue edged up to $29.2 billion from $28.2 billion in the 2025 quarter, while wireless equipment recorded a 9% drop in revenue, reflecting substantially lower upgrade volumes and the company's decision to reduce spending on device subsidies, it said. Broadband net additions totaled 314,000, down from 322,000 a year earlier. Verizon forecasts mobility and broadband service revenue to grow in the upper half of a 2.5% to 3% guidance for the current year, with roughly 4% gains in the ongoing three-month period, it said. Last week, AT&T (T) raised its full-year earnings outlook following stronger-than-expected third-quarter results, though its postpaid phone subscriber growth missed projections. T-Mobile US (TMUS) is scheduled to release its latest financial results later this week. Price: 43.67, Change: -0.99, Percent Change: -2.23