Verizon Communications raised its full-year financial outlook for the third consecutive quarter, buoyed by strong gains in its postpaid phone segment and expanded business partnerships in the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure space. The announcement came Monday alongside the company’s disclosure of a new contract with Amazon Web Services (AWS) valued at over $2 billion to supply dark fiber for AI workloads.

This agreement follows a similar deal struck earlier this year with Alphabet’s Google, worth more than $1 billion. Verizon Chief Executive Dan Schulman described these contracts as significant endorsements, positioning Verizon as a strategic connectivity partner for leading AI infrastructure builders globally.

Schulman added that talks are ongoing with other hyperscale cloud providers and large enterprise clients to provide fiber connectivity. The company is also seeing increased demand from partners utilizing its network hubs for AI inference and edge computing applications.

Verizon reported a net addition of 406,000 postpaid phone connections in the third quarter, marking its strongest performance on this key metric in five years. This figure notably exceeded analysts’ expectations, which had forecast a net gain of approximately 195,300 postpaid connections. Schulman attributed the growth to a strategic shift away from heavy subsidies toward attracting loyal, high-value customers through offerings such as an expanded loyalty program and the Simplicity plan introduced earlier in the year.

“We are not buying customers. We are winning them on revenue-positive terms and keeping them longer,” Schulman said during an analyst call.

The robust postpaid phone growth contributed to stronger third-quarter financial results. Verizon posted a net profit of $5.3 billion, or $1.25 per share, compared with $5.06 billion, or $1.17 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share were $1.31, surpassing analyst forecasts of $1.27. Revenue rose 1.5% to $34.3 billion but fell slightly short of analyst estimates of $34.77 billion.

Reflecting the positive momentum, Verizon raised its full-year guidance, now anticipating adjusted earnings per share between $5.04 and $5.06, up from a prior range of $4.99 to $5.04. The company also increased its forecast for total postpaid phone net additions to between 1.1 million and 1.2 million, higher than the previous estimate of 875,000 to 1 million. Additionally, Verizon expects mobility and broadband service revenue growth to be in the upper half of its initial forecast range of 2.5% to 3% for the year, surpassing Wall Street projections of roughly $5 in adjusted earnings per share and 975,000 postpaid phone net additions.