Impacts of Pai as FCC Chairman Tough to Predict, Verizon CFO Says
The likely implications of Ajit Pai's being named FCC chairman and what it means for ISP privacy rules and the rest of Verizon’s regulatory agenda are difficult to predict, said Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matthew Ellis on a financial call…
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Tuesday as the carrier released Q4 results. “There’s a lot of changes going on in D.C,” Ellis said. The appointment of Pai “may have a number of impacts across the regulatory space,” he said. “It’s just too soon to tell exactly where we’re going to be.” Verizon has to make long-term investments, Ellis said. “Our investments aren’t focused on just who happens to be in office today,” he said. “We’re making investments for 10-plus years.” None of that will change, he said on his first call as CFO. He gave no update on Verizon’s proposed $4.83 billion buy of Yahoo, which over the past four months disclosed two data breaches that occurred in 2013 and 2014 (see 1609220046 and 1612150010). “We are still working with Yahoo to assess the impact of the breaches and we have not reached any final conclusions yet,” Ellis said. The acquiree said the deal's closing was delayed a quarter to Q2 (see 1701240034). Verizon meanwhile added 591,000 net subscribers in the quarter, with total subscribers of 114.2 million, up 1.9 percent from last year, Verizon said. But subscriber additions were below the 726,000 predicted by Wall Street analysts. “In the fourth quarter we expanded our customer base in highly competitive wireless and broadband markets,” CEO Lowell McAdam said in a news release. “This capped a year in which we delivered solid results and returned value to shareholders, including $9.3 billion in dividends.”