AT&T (NYSE: T) reported Q4 revenue of $30.3 billion, up 91 percent from last year’s $15.89 billion—largely due to the merger of AT&T and SBC. On a pro-forma basis, total revenue grew by 2.9 percent compared to the prior year’s quarter. Net income in the quarter came to $3.1 billion, up from $1.9 billion, however on a per share basis earnings were flat (again, reflecting the merger). Excluding costs associated with the merger, net income grew to $4.3 billion, from $2.4 billion, with earnings per share growing by 16.4 percent. Some highlights:

-- Broadband revenue, which includes DSL and U-Verse subscribers, grew 13.7 percent in the quarter, to $1.4 billion.
-- The company claimed 231,000 U-Verse subscribers at the end of the quarter, up from 126,000 at the start of Q4. Per week U-Verse installs averaged 12,000 in mid-December, ahead of the company’s previous 10,000/week target, which is what it was doing in the previous quarter.
-- In 2008, the company expects to hit the 1 million subscriber mark for U-Verse.
-- Total video subscribers, including those delivered through satellite partnerships, hit 2.3 million for the quarter.
-- Q4 wireless revenue hit $11.4 billion, up 16.3 percent from the prior year’s quarter. ARPU grew 1.9 percent year over year.
-- For 2008, the company is anticipating consolidated revenue growth in the mid-single digits.

Release | Webcast Slides (.pdf) | Transcript (via SeekingAlpha)

Conference call: AT&T claims that its U-Verse business is right on target, but the discussion of it on its conference call was relatively subdued as wireless is still the main story. As noted in the slides, consumer video penetration, U-Verse and satellite, is at 7 percent, while its broadband penetration is at 38.9 percent. The U-Verse business is now in 41 markets and the company expects to hit 40,000 per-week installs in 2008, according to CFO Rick Lindner. Expected growth drivers include faster speeds, advanced DVRs, multi-screen HD capabilities coming in Q2 and free access to AT&T’s. U-Verse churn remains low, numbers are this point aren’t meaningful given the lack of comparisons.

-- Economy: Earlier this month, AT&T COO Randall Stephenson caused tremors when he warned of economic weakness, impacting wireline access and broadband businesses. This obviously remains a top concern. Following a long-winded question from an analyst, Lindner explained that the January comments weren’t really much different than what the company was saying in December, but obviously the market and the media heard things differently. “Where we saw some softness, as we’d mentioned, were in access lines… and we saw it in some slowing in broadband net adds… for both products, this has resulted in 10bp of additional churn.” As for the company’s current outlook, these economic issues are already ‘baked in’. “As you look across the rest of the business, we’re clearly not seeing any impacts on our wireless business at this point… the economy is always a risk, but when you look across our business, we’re relatively defensive.” ARPU growth is being driven by data and that data growth is driven by new devices. Together, those things are opening up a whole new host of applications that I think will bring value to our customers.” “Even in broadband… when you annualized the broadband net adds, they’re still growing at better than a double-digit pace.”

-- iPhone: Not surprisingly, there was a lot of interest on the call about the iPhone business. At the end of the year, the company had just under 2 million iPhone subscribers, below Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) claim that 4 million have been sold. Explanations for the gap include international sales, un-activated phones (some of which will be unlocked) and phones that AT&T has purchased which are sitll inventory. iPhone ARPU is nearly twice what the average ARPU for AT&T customers is, but they won’t break out what cut Apple gets of this.

• Update: AT&T: U-Verse Available To 30 Million Homes in 2010; EchoStar Buy Unlikely; Strong Ad Growth
• Earnings: AT&T Reports Record Number Of Mobile Subs In Q307, 10,000 New Users/Week For U-verse