Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

You're confusing revenue and profit. Revenue is $$ coming in. In my example, Verizon gets $700 over 24 months. That is revenue.

Profit is the difference between revenue and cost. That is the money they make. Revenue and profit are only the same if the cost is zero. Simple math.

They are making money on their smartphone sales. Just like a car dealer that buys from the factory at one price and sells to the consumer at another, Verizon is making money. All sales contribute to revenue, but only the difference between revenue and cost contributes to profit. A car dealer may have $10 million in revenue, but if their margin is only 5%, they only make $500K on that $10M in revenue. Hopefully we're getting a healthy margin on smartphones. In the old world we got squeezed pretty good with smartphone subsidies. Times have changed.

How can VZW make $700 on a phone they sold for $700 with a cost of $450? Sounds like Obama math to me.

Wow I am amazed at how clueless you truly are. Wow!! Revenue is any money received for the sale of an item. Profit is when the revenue exceeds the cost. So when we pay Samsung $450 for a smartphone and then sell it over 24 months to a customer for $700, we get $700 of revenue over those 24 months and make a profit. In the old world we gave the device away and structured the contract pricing such that we got enough revenue to cover the device and hopefully make some money. New world is better for Verizon.

But since you are so clueless I'm sure this still makes no sense. So when you go and buy something under a payment plan at a furniture store and pay your 200 a month or whatever, are they giving you the furniture for free? Uh nope. You're paying for it over time. Whether you pay it all up front or over time, it's still revenue to the seller. The timing affects when the revenue is recognized. But it is still revenue. In Verizon's case, we are selling the device at list price, so we make even more and can afford to not charge interest especially since the cost of money has been so low.

But I'm talking to a wall. How do people like you survive in the world?

I use to do some shady accounting tricks with the former CFO in the good ole days.

The debt repayment schedule starts to ramp up in 2020. Go to the public VZ investor relations page if you want details. If revenue keeps shrinking from competition and commoditization, the only way to stay at the same level of profitability and pay debt and keep dividends paying out is through the massive cost cuts that McDuck has been talking about.

What a clueless sack. Hello, but when you sell a phone for retail price to a customer, that is called revenue. We make money on the sale. You don't think we bought it for retail price from Apple or Samsung do you? No wonder we are getting rid of people like you.

Fios internet is the future and wireless has peaked, so true.