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T-Mobile Gained Two Million Customers in Fourth Quarter Amid Continued Heavy Promotions

CEO John Legere says T-Mobile is "managing the balance between growth and profitability."

Asa Mathat

T-Mobile continued to gain customers almost as fast as it announced new promotions last quarter, adding more than 2.1 million customers in total.

In a statement early Wednesday, T-Mobile said that it added 1.3 million customers under its own brands, including one million phone customers, in addition to gains in other areas such as customers buying service from another company that uses T-Mobile’s network.

Overall, T-Mobile said it continues to see positive numbers when it comes to customers bringing their phone numbers to T-Mobile versus leaving for a competitor.

CEO John Legere also said that the company is “managing the balance between growth and profitability.” The company did not release financial results with the customer gain details.

That said, the company has no plans to let up on its heavy promotions, marketing chief Mike Sievert said at an investor conference on Wednesday. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam had suggested earlier this week that T-Mobile and Sprint will have to ease up on promotions to help cover the cost of spectrum and network improvements.

“There will be no normal,” Sievert said. “This is the normal. … We like the way things are working right now.”

Among the promotions that T-Mobile announced last quarter was a move to allow customers to carry over unused data, a plan it calls Data Stash. AT&T responded on Wednesday, saying it will allow some customers to carry over data, though only from one month to the next. T-Mobile’s plan allows customers to carry over data for a year.

CFO Braxton Carter added that the company sees continued promotions leading to further customer gains in 2015 as well as “double digit” increases in revenue and positive free cash flow in 2015. He hinted the company reached its earnings target for the fourth quarter as well.

“We have never missed or not exceeded guidance,” Carter said. “We have no intention of starting that trend now.”

On the network front, T-Mobile said it expects its LTE network to reach 300 million people by the end of this year, up from 265 million people at the end of 2014. CTO Neville Ray said the company is also rapidly adding the 700 MHz spectrum it acquired from Verizon last year.

Here are the nitty gritty details on T-Mobile’s fourth quarter:

T-Mobile q4 customer data

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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