Telecoms giant AT&T sent out its latest earnings report, complete with bullish news for its broadband bizz and a peek into HBO’s quarterly success story.

Shares lifted up 4% on Thursday to hit a near three-month high, despite narrowly missing on both ends with EPS of $0.77 on revenues that were down 13% to $38.1bn. Offsetting that decline was 2.5% growth in core wireless revenue, as the biz returns to its telecoms roots.
Its broadband and wireless segments had their strongest quarter in years. The brand added 965k postpaid subscribers (way ahead of estimates), a N.B. metric for wireless companies that tracks customers who pay a monthly bill – so clearly its aggressive expansion into 5G is working.
AT&T is fresh off its WarnerMedia sale, and earnings were affected by costs associated with the launch of CNN+, which has now been shut down. Awks. What the earnings did reveal though, was how HBO was doing before the spinoff – the platform added 13m subscribers last year, coming in stark comparison to Netflix’s recent earnings flop.