T-Mobile’s brash and outspoken CEO John Legere gets attention, and plenty of free media buzz, for various hijinks, such as his liberal use of expletives at press conferences and crashing rock shows sponsored by his competitors.
On Monday, Legere took his tricks to another level, publishing a rap mashup of the voice of Verizon CFO Fran Shammo from an earnings call last week with analysts and the song by Afroman called “Because I Got High.”
Using the Smule web site, which lets anyone create a Karaoke-like version of famous songs, the T-Mobile (TMUS) CEO added a clip of Shammo’s discussion of a 1.5% decline in revenue at Verizon, excluding its acquisition of AOL, to the background music from the Afroman song.
Verizon (VZ) declined to comment.
The nation’s largest wireless provider reported total revenue, including AOL, to have increased 0.6% to $32.2 billion with earnings per share up 4% to $1.06. A strike by some 40,000 Verizon workers from Massachusetts to Virginia has not yet impacted the company’s financial results, Shammo said.
“If we exclude AOL, which was not part of Verizon a year ago, our top line revenue declined by 1.5% for the quarter,” Shammo said during the April 21 call. “This was due to lower wireless phone activations on the device installment sales, lower upgrades, and the continued migration of our customer base to unsubsidized pricing.”
Given Legere’s snarky post, it’s a good bet that T-Mobile will have better revenue growth than Verizon.
T-Mobile reports its first quarter earnings on Tuesday, with analysts expecting revenue to have risen 8% to $8.4 billion and earnings per share of 10 cents, up from a net loss of 9 cents per share a year earlier.