Verizon Communications reported its strongest third quarter in years on Monday, posting record adjusted profitability and its best postpaid phone subscriber growth since 2019, while simultaneously unveiling a new, multibillion-dollar infrastructure partnership with Amazon Web Services aimed at powering artificial intelligence workloads.

The telecom giant said total operating revenue reached $34.3 billion for the quarter, up 1.5% year-over-year, according to the earnings release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. GAAP earnings per share came in at $1.25, up 6.8% from a year earlier, while adjusted EPS rose 8.3% to $1.31. Net income climbed 5.2% to $5.3 billion, and adjusted EBITDA hit $13.8 billion — up 8.0% and, the company said, the highest it has ever reported, pushing margins to 40.2% from 37.8% a year ago.

On the subscriber side, Verizon added 406,000 postpaid phone net customers, its strongest third-quarter haul in five years, and 137,000 postpaid net accounts, which it called its best performance in more than a decade. Broadband additions totaled 314,000, split between 155,000 fiber and 159,000 fixed wireless access customers. Free cash flow rose 12.1% to $7.8 billion for the quarter, and $18.0 billion over the first nine months of the year, up 14.3%. Equipment revenue was a soft spot, falling 9.0% as fewer customers upgraded devices.

A third straight guidance raise — and an AI pivot

Verizon raised its full-year 2026 guidance for the third consecutive quarter. It now expects postpaid phone net additions of 1.1 million to 1.2 million, up from a prior range of 750,000 to 1.0 million, and adjusted EPS growth of 7.0% to 7.5%, up from 6.0% to 7.0%. Projected free-cash-flow growth was lifted to roughly 12%, from 9–10% previously, while capital spending guidance held steady at $16.0 billion to $16.5 billion. The results topped the adjusted-EPS consensus tracked in a pre-earnings analyst preview, though GAAP EPS landed just under that same estimate.

The bigger surprise came bundled into the same release: Verizon and Amazon Web Services are expanding their partnership through what the companies termed a "landmark" deal valued at more than $2 billion, establishing what Verizon described as a commercial framework to scale distributed compute capacity for real-time, agentic and generative AI workloads. It builds on a fiber-network partnership the companies announced last year to connect AWS data centers, and signals Verizon is leaning harder into AI-driven demand for network capacity as a growth lever beyond phone plans.

"VERIZON DELIVERED ANOTHER RECORD-BREAKING QUARTER. ONE YEAR INTO OUR TRANSFORMATION, VERIZON IS FUNDAMENTALLY STRONGER — OPERATIONALLY, FINANCIALLY, AND COMPETITIVELY," said Dan Schulman, Verizon's chief executive.

Schulman, the former PayPal chief executive who took over Verizon's top job in October 2025 after Hans Vestberg's exit, has pushed the company toward "customer-first offerings" such as its Simplicity plans and an expanded loyalty program rather than leaning on heavy device subsidies to win and keep customers. "At the same time, technology leaders are choosing our fiber network to power the next generation of AI infrastructure," he said in the release, adding that the company is "only one year into a multi-year growth story."

Monday's report lands almost exactly a year into Schulman's tenure and gives him his clearest evidence yet that the strategy is working: three straight quarters of raised guidance, record EBITDA, and now a flagship AI partnership layered on top of the core wireless business. Investors and analysts will be watching whether subscriber momentum and the AWS tie-up hold up heading into the fourth quarter, Verizon's seasonally heaviest for device promotions and competitive pricing battles with AT&T and T-Mobile.