AT&T Inc. CEO Randall Stephenson said that this year is going to be a big transition for the American telecom giant.
The company has a number of acquisitions underway and plans to aggressively expand in Mexico.
“As we get to the end of 2015,” Stephenson said of AT&T, “we’re going to be talking about a very different business and a very different company.”
Through acquiring DirecTV and the Mexican wireless companies Iusacell and Nextel Mexico the company is diversifying its sources of revenue and expanding its presence worldwide.
AT&T’s largest revenue stream will come from business-related accounts after it closes the DirecTV deal closes, according to Stephenson.
Iusacell and Nextel Mexico will be part of AT&T’s North American mobile service area.
The CEO said the following at a conference call Tuesday as AT&T released its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results after the markets closed.
“We have the makings for what we need for a very viable and strong Mexico strategy,” Stephenson said.
AT&T posted revenue of $34.4 billion in the three months that ended Dec. 31 – a 3.8 percent increase from the year before.
For fiscal 2014 it posted revenue of $132.4 billion, a 2.9 percent increase from 2013.
The telecom giant posted a net loss of $3.97 billion in the fourth quarter, down from a net income of $6.9 billion a year earlier.
For fiscal 2014 the company posted net income of $6.2 billion compared with $18.2 billion in 2013.
One analyst asked Stephenson asked about whether there will be more acquisitions in Latin America.
“Right now we have about as much as … we can handle,” Stephenson said. “We are not prepared to go north of the border yet. Building out Mexico will be a full court press for the next few years.”
