Verizon Communications Inc.

The Board authorized up to $25 billion of share repurchases expected to complete over the next 3 years, including at least $3 billion in 2026 — Verizon's first major buyback authorization in years. The Board also declared a dividend payable in May representing an annualized increase of $0.07, a 2.5% increase from the prior annual rate — the 20th consecutive year of dividend increases. Importantly, the annual dividend increase was pulled forward to the first dividend declaration of the year. Schulman said Verizon's capital allocation framework remains unchanged — invest in business, dividend, debt paydown, return cash to shareholders — but that Verizon is now 'making meaningful improvements in our capital allocation to shareholders.' Leverage ended 2025 at 2.2x, inside the long-term target for a second consecutive quarter. Post-Frontier leverage will temporarily rise approximately 0.25 turn, with return to 2.0-2.25x target expected in 2027.

Schulman committed to a $5 billion in-year OPEX savings war chest for 2026, with a substantial portion from headcount reductions plus marketing efficiencies, real estate rationalization, and contract renegotiations. In Q4 2025, Verizon reduced its workforce by 13,000 — 80% off payroll in Q4 with the remainder in Q1 2026. Schulman identified three waves of efficiency: (1) aggressive elimination of underperformance, redundant organizational structures, and hierarchy layers; (2) complexity reduction through end-to-end customer experience simplification; (3) automation at scale of the simplified processes. Legacy areas being aggressively reduced or eliminated include business wireline, nondirectional products, wholesale, legacy copper, and long-payback projects — parts of the business 'costing us billions of dollars of margin.' Schulman aims to make Verizon 'the most efficient telecom company in our industry.' Cost transformation is reinvested partially into customer experience with the balance dropping to the bottom line.

Verizon closed the Frontier acquisition on January 20, 2026, bringing combined fiber passings to over 30 million with significant cross-sell opportunity given Verizon's wireless under-penetration in Frontier markets. Frontier delivered 125,000 fiber net adds in Q4 (29% YOY increase) and added approximately 1.3 million new fiber passings in 2025, finishing with more than 9 million passings. The combined 2025 Frontier + FWA + fiber net adds were almost 1.9 million, resulting in over 16.3 million broadband connections. Schulman raised the medium-term fiber passings target to 40-50 million (from 35-40 million previously) and committed to adding at least 2 million fiber passings in 2026. Frontier integration synergies were doubled to over $1 billion of run-rate operating cost synergies by 2028 — driven by network integration, third-party contract efficiencies, and marketing/advertising go-to-market savings. Verizon paid down approximately $5.7 billion of Frontier's debt since the close. The Tillman partnership and Starry acquisition complement the organic and Frontier-driven fiber expansion.

Schulman announced completion of a comprehensive long-term agreement with Comcast and Charter to continue Verizon's MVNO partnership with the cable operators. While specific terms were not disclosed, Schulman described the agreement as being on 'very solid footing financially, operationally and strategically' and explicitly called it 'an accretive deal that ensures their customers remain on the best network.' This removes a significant overhang heading into 2026 given the cable operators' expanding wireless businesses and strengthens Verizon's wholesale revenue visibility. Combined with Verizon's own convergence strategy leveraging Frontier's fiber footprint, the renewed cable MVNO relationship underscores Schulman's 'build the network once, sell connections many times' framing that carried over from the prior management team.

Schulman is targeting the H1 2026 launch of Verizon's new value proposition, currently in the fine-tuning stage after deep market research with sophisticated conjoint analysis. The feedback is described as 'quite positive' and 2026 guidance incorporates the expected volume and financial impact of the new proposition. Schulman committed to an 'AI-first' approach deploying AI at scale to simplify offers, reduce churn through smart marketing, proactively address customer pain points, and deliver hyper-personalized experiences with a vision that 'eventually every individual customer will have a tailored proposition.' The call opened with an acknowledgment of a network outage earlier in the month that 'did not meet the standard of excellence our customers expect' — Schulman committed to relentless work to restore that standard. AI Connect is reframed as unlocking new revenue streams from existing assets serving hyperscalers and enterprise AI demand.