T-Mobile (NYSE:TMUS) is enjoying a happy holiday season to cap an impressive year. The carrier doubled the number of its postpaid net additions during the four-day period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday compared to the same period in 2014, company executives said at an investor conference. And T-Mobile posted a churn rate of 1.43 percent in October and November, substantially lower than the 1.74 percent it reported during the same time last year.
"Our Black Friday weekend, the four-day weekend, was very competitive," COO Mike Sievert said at the event. "It was a lot better than last year, and last year was a strong quarter for us."
The executives also updated attendees with some strong financial numbers: They said they expect postpaid net adds to be at the high end of guidance for the 2015 fiscal year, while cash capital expenditures will be at the "very low" end of a range of $4.4 billion to $4.7 billion.
Additionally, the executives said T-Mobile's network now covers 303 million POPs, and that 40 percent of the voice calls are through its LTE network. And as Jennifer Fritzsche of Wells Fargo Securities observed in a research note, T-Mobile believes that while customer growth may slow in 2016, it "will be able to significantly ramp its cash flow if that occurs."
Part of T-Mobile's recent momentum may be attributed to its new Binge On program, a zero-rated video streaming service that Strategy Analytics recently predicted will continue to attract new users through the end of 2015 and beyond. T-Mobile also was ranked as the top-performing carrier by Consumer Reports late last week.
T-Mobile received some bad news this week, however, when it learned the Attorney General of New York is investigating claims that ads for its contract-free plans are misleading. A consumer-advocacy group complains that users are actually locked into two-year loans for phones and other equipment.
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