Verizon Communications Inc.

(New York Stock Exchange)
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Bullish +65

Inside Dan Schulman’s war on the old Verizon - Yahoo Finance

Company update Layoffs Leadership change AI-generated analysis

📉 Verizon surrendered significant market share to competitors like AT&T and T-Mobile prior to Dan Schulman's arrival as CEO in October 2025.

🔪 The company executed steep cost cuts including layoffs of roughly 13,000 employees (approx. 13% of workforce) to signal a decisive change in culture.

📈 In the third quarter of 2025, Verizon gained a net 406,000 phone lines, marking its strongest quarterly showing in five years.

💰 The company added 137,000 customer accounts while reducing spending on promotional offers by 41% to improve unit economics.

📉 Verizon canceled a planned price increase and launched the 'Simplicity' offering with starting prices as low as $30 per line to combat churn.

🤖 AI tools are being deployed to cut customer service interaction times, such as reducing in-store phone buying processes by six minutes.

🌐 Verizon signed multi-billion dollar agreements with Google and Amazon Web Services for high-capacity fiber networks supporting AI data centers.

🚀 CEO Dan Schulman is pushing executives to set more ambitious goals rather than consistently meeting easy targets to avoid falling behind.

🛡️ Despite SpaceX purchasing $8 billion in spectrum, Schulman estimates building a rival mobile network would cost $300 billion and take four to six years.

Bullish Signals
  • Verizon achieved its strongest third-quarter showing in five years with a net gain of 406,000 phone lines in Q3 2025.
  • The company added 137,000 customer accounts in the third quarter, representing its best quarterly performance in over a decade.
  • Verizon successfully reduced spending on promotional offers by 41% while still growing its subscriber base.
  • Dan Schulman secured multi-billion dollar agreements with Google and Amazon Web Services for fiber infrastructure supporting AI data centers.
  • The company is leveraging AI to improve internal systems, cutting six minutes from the in-store phone buying process.
Risk Factors
  • Verizon lost a net 414,000 postpaid phone lines during the first three quarters of 2025 before the recent turnaround.
  • The company previously suffered from a sprawling bureaucracy where approving simple decisions required up to 35 signatures.
  • Verizon's traditional network reliability advantage has become a baseline expectation, reducing its ability to command a premium price.
  • Competitors AT&T and T-Mobile added millions of postpaid lines in 2024 while Verizon added less than 900,000.
Full Analysis
Dan Schulman assumed the role of Verizon's CEO in October 2025, immediately addressing a severe decline in market share and profitability caused by bureaucratic inefficiencies and aggressive competition from AT&T and T-Mobile. Upon taking the helm, Schulman identified that the company had become a 'lumbering giant' where simple decisions required excessive approvals, leading to significant job cuts of approximately 13% and a strategic pivot away from legacy habits. Despite years of losing net postpaid lines, Verizon showed early signs of recovery in the third quarter with a net gain of 406,000 phone lines and its strongest quarterly performance in five years. This turnaround was achieved while simultaneously slashing spending on promotional offers by 41% and canceling planned price hikes to rebuild customer trust and reduce churn. Schulman is executing a deep cultural transformation aimed at dismantling decades of ingrained inertia, forcing the workforce to adopt faster decision-making and more ambitious goals. The strategy involves aggressive cost-cutting, launching lower-priced plans like 'Simplicity' to compete on price, and leveraging AI to improve operational efficiency and customer service speed. Looking forward, Verizon is positioning itself against new threats like SpaceX's spectrum acquisition by investing in high-capacity fiber networks for data centers and securing multi-billion dollar agreements with major cloud providers. While acknowledging the long-term challenge of building a mobile network rival to its own, Schulman remains confident in Verizon's ability to compete ferociously once such a threat materializes.