The new year is bringing new momentum for Verizon Communications Inc.’s stock.
The stock suffered its worst annual decline in 17 years during 2022, though it eked out gains during the final two sessions of the year. It has also risen in each of the first four sessions of 2023, putting Verizon’s VZ, +1.18% stock on track for its longest winning streak since August 2021.
The stock has gained 8.7% during the current six-session streak, which would mark Verizon’s best six-day stretch since April 2, 2020, when it increased 10.6%, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Verizon spent much of 2022 in Wall Street’s doghouse after a string of subscriber losses that were at odds with what the company’s main peers, T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS, +2.83% and AT&T T, +1.67%, were showing.
The company lost subscribers in its consumer business in each of the first three quarters of 2022, but Chief Executive Hans Vestberg recently indicated that trends were improving. Verizon’s goal was to record positive consumer-subscriber trends in the fourth quarter, and Vestberg shared at a Citi investor conference earlier this week that the company had achieved that target.
“We expect Verizon to remain competitive to sustain and possibly improve its gross add share by going local, while we believe the company is staying disciplined on the balance between volume and ARPU [average revenue per user] to focus on net service revenue growth,” Citi analyst Michael Rollins wrote following the event.
Though he has a neutral rating on Verizon’s stock, Rollins noted that the “positive commentary on [the fourth quarter] may be helpful for the share price to trade higher near-term.”
See also: T-Mobile shares gain after ‘solid’ subscriber numbers offer upbeat industry signal
At the Citi event, the carriers also offered views on improved supply conditions for high-end smartphones. Apple Inc. AAPL, +3.68% warned last fall that COVID-19 restrictions in China would lead to lower iPhone 14 Pro shipments than it initially anticipated, but the three wireless companies indicated at the event that supply constraints had eased by the end of the fourth quarter.
Read: Looking for clues about iPhone supply? Ask AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile