T-Mobile US Q3 2026 earnings: profit beats expectations, guidance raised

October 28, 2026

T-Mobile's Q3 2026 profit beat expectations and revenue matched forecasts, with management raising its full-year cash-flow and profitability outlook.

Key takeaways

• Profit came in well above what analysts had expected, and revenue landed almost exactly in line with forecasts, a case of the bottom line outperforming while the top line simply matched the plan.
• Net income rose to about $3.5 billion for the quarter, with per-share profit up roughly a third from a year earlier — growth management tied to more customers paying for service and each paying a bit more, not to one-off items.
• T-Mobile added about 274,000 net postpaid accounts (customers who pay a monthly bill rather than pre-paying), fewer than the same quarter last year. The company had flagged this slowdown in advance, tied to changes it made to simplify rate plans, and it still expects roughly 1 million such additions for the full year.
• Average revenue per account rose about 4% to $155.73 a month, and postpaid service revenue grew 9% — evidence customers are increasingly upgrading to pricier plans and bundled services like home internet, rather than the growth coming mainly from adding new subscribers.
• The company’s core profitability measure (adjusted EBITDA, a proxy for cash earnings from operations before interest, taxes and depreciation) grew about 11% from a year ago, and management raised its full-year outlook for that measure as well as for free cash flow — the cash left over after running the business and funding its network buildout.
• Margins over the trailing twelve months stayed healthy: roughly 63 cents of every revenue dollar was left after the direct cost of service, and about 20 cents made it to operating profit before interest and taxes — typical of a capital-intensive wireless business with high fixed network costs but strong pricing power once a network is built.
• Return on equity over the trailing year was about 18%, meaning the company generated roughly 18 cents of profit for every dollar shareholders had invested, a sign the business continues to convert its scale into solid returns even as it keeps spending on fiber and network expansion.
• One figure cuts against the otherwise strong quarter: per-share earnings over the trailing twelve months were still down about 10% from a year earlier, even though this single quarter’s profit jumped sharply — a reminder that one strong quarter doesn’t erase the drag from weaker results earlier in the same stretch.
• CEO Srini Gopalan described it as another strong quarter, crediting the company’s push on network quality, value pricing and customer experience, and the release highlighted continued expansion of fiber-internet joint ventures alongside the raised guidance.

Q3 2026 in context

Figures for the quarter ended Sep 2026 and the quarter ended Sep 2025, as reported to the SEC.

How the stock took it

T-Mobile US Inc closed at $146.83 on Oct 27, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $147.29 on Oct 29, 2026, the first session after it — +0.3% across the report.

Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.

Fundamentals

Financial history →

Sources: company report