Verizon earnings given boost by Trump tax credit

American carrier Verizon reported earnings that fell just shy of Wall Street estimates for its fourth quarter but noted that recent reforms to US tax laws had resulted in a one-time reduction in net deferred income tax liabilities of around $16.8bn.

Net income for the three months leading to 31 December came in at $18.7bn, or $4.56 per share, up considerably from the $4.5bn posted a year earlier; however, excluding items such as the tax law, earnings per share rounded out the quarter at $0.86, two cents shy of consensus forecasts for Verizon.

Revenue crawled ahead to $34bn from the $32.34bn reported twelve months previous.

Verizon picked up 47,000 new Fios internet subscribers during the period and lost 29,000 Fios video subscribers, something the New York-based company said was a result of the shift from traditional linear video to over-the-top offerings.

Ful- year revenues were expected to grow at a low single-digit rate as service revenue growth was tapped to turn positive by early 2019.

Wall Street speculators had named Verizon as a potential merger candidate as deal-making and consolidation spread through the industry, including tie-ups at Time Warner, Disney, and the off-and-on talks between Sprint and T-Mobile.

But Verizon chief executive Lowell McAdam said on Tuesday that Verizon would not be seeking a large media merger, adding that while "it's nice to be loved," there was "nothing going on with us" regarding media acquisitions.

Verizon also ran-out Oath, a digital content and advertising arm which includes Yahoo and AOL, and was planning a 5G rollout of the unit to be part of $17bn to $17.8bn worth of capital expenditures planned for the year.

As of 1500 GMT, shares had lost ground 0.28% to $53.25 each.